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The Florida and the Caribbean Open Books SeriesIn rf, the University Press of Florida, in collaboration with the George A. Smathers Libraries of the University of Florida, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mel lon Foundation, under the Humanities Open Books program, to repub lish books related to Florida and the Caribbean and to make them freely available through an open access platform. te resulting list of books is the Florida and the Caribbean Open Books Series published by the Li braryPress@UF in collaboration with the University of Florida Press, an imprint of the University Press of Florida. A panel of distinguished schol ars has selected the series titles from the UPF list, identied as essential r eading for scholars and students. te ser ies i s composed of titles that showcase a long, distinguished history of publishing works of Latin American and Caribbean scholar ship that connect through generations and places. te breadth and depth of the list demonstrates Floridas commitment to transnational history and regional studies. Selected reprints include Daniel Brintons A GuideBook of Florida and the South (), Cornelis Goslingas e Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, (n), and Nelson Blakes Land into WaterWater into Land (f). Also of note are titles from the Bicentennial Floridiana Facsimile Series. te series, published in n in commemoration of Americas bicentenary, comprises twenty-ve books regarded as classics, out-of-print works that needed to be in more librar ies and readers bookcases, including Sidney Laniers Florida: It s Scen ery, Climate, and History (n) and Silvia Sunshines Petals P lucked from Sunn y Climes (f). Tod a ys readers will benet from having free and open access to these works, as they provide unique perspectives on the historical scholarship

Preface Sociologist Fernando Ortiz, in numerous studies, discovered the African con tribution to Cuban culture in the island's art, religion, and language and "in the tone of the collective emotionality." Writer and folklorist Lydia Cabrera would later ask, not waiting for an answer: "What piece of our soil is not saturated with secret African influences?" Fidel Castro would more recently declare, "We are Latinoafroamericans!" In the structures of perception and discourse, in the everyday language of thought and feeling, Africanity runs through and colors everything that can be called uniquely Cuban. The pro cess of cultural transplantation, diffusion, and synthesis of course is not unique to Cuba but exemplifies what has occurred generally throughout the Caribbean since the colonial period. African culture, observes Dathorne, gave the region "an air of new cultural autonomy" and new patterns of culture, especially where the absence of indigenous culture was most strongly felt (1). Indeed, as developments in religious forms have perhaps most clearly demonstrated, the amalgamation, synthesis, symbiosis, or crossing of di verse West African and Hispanic cultural elements in the American setting produced a new religious culture. In Cuba as elsewhere in the Antilles, the "peculiar institution" of slavery made possible the birth of this distinctly Afro-Caribbean culture. And religion, as I hope to demonstrate, has func tioned in Cuba as elsewhere in the Antilles as a social subsystem that gave form and unity to the insular culture. The present study is intended for an audience of literary scholars, cultural historians, and critics as well as those simply interested in the printed literature on Afro-Cuban religion. It ap proaches a number of modern narrative texts that address themes and sym bols of the Afro-Cuban religions with the premise that those texts provide

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IN 0 Pltffltt keys to unlocking some of the mysteries of Afro-Cuban religions and their cultural context. Afro-Cuban religionsespecially the ones known as Regla de Ocha, la Sociedad Secreta Abakua, Palo Monte, and the Regla Araraare those Cuban systems of faith and worship that originated from transcultural processes by which elements from West African and Catholic belief systems were com bined and transformed; from preexisting rituals, doctrines, mythologies, and cosmologies, new religions were assembled and reconformed. Afro-Cuban religions therefore, as the hyphenated denomination indicates, were religions that were originally reinvented by African peoples who were transported to Cuba during the period of colonization and forced to labor as slaves for the benefit of the Spanish, and later the Creole, plantocracy. In creating new, semicovert religions out of the components of preexisting religions, the trans planted Africans forged a source of identity, an arm of psychic resistance, and a medium of social cohesion to the extent that it could exist under the dehu manizing conditions of slavery Beside the transculturative processes by which they developed, other char acteristics common to these religions mark their distinctiveness within Cu ban culture. Those characteristics include polytheistic and animistic beliefs; rituals mediating between humans and divinitiessuch as initiation, pos session, sacrifice, and divination; magic, in the form of spells or ethnomedi-cine; and the central importance of music and dance in religious ceremonies. A little more than a century after the abolition, Afro-Cuban religions continue to fascinate, and they continue to gain believers and practitioners throughout the two Americas despite numerous distorted or oversimplified representations of those religions in the mass media. The body of Afro-Cu ban literature is substantial, and its systematic study, to which this book as pires to contribute, is only just beginning. That literature will impress gen erations of scholars not only with its beauty and evocative power but also with its intellectual challenge to Eurocentric modes of reading culture. This book is an examination of the treatments that Afro-Cuban religion has received in Cuban narrative during the period extending from the middle of the Republican era (from the late 1920s through the 1930s) to the con temporary period of the Revolution and the so-called Second Diaspora of African culture. My approach to the subject includes a reading of Afro-Cuban religious signs and discourse incorporated into the systems of that narrative in works by both major and lesser known authors associated with the move ment called el afrocubanismo. Afro-Cuban religious motifs in the texts of that literary movement often refer to the subtext of West African myths in which

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Preface o iiii the principal actants are the gods, variously called orishos, ochas, dioscs, santos, espiritus, mpungus, ngangas, loas, mystcres, or vaudoux. As literary texts reveal, the deities populate the religious subtexts of mythical storytelling and divination rituals, which maintain their own archive of narrative knowledge. As if the connection between literature and popular culture did not give reason enough to embark on this study, the list of major Afro-Cubanist au thors concerned with religious issues reads like a who's who of Cuban letters. That list includes such names as Fernando Ortiz, Romulo Lachataiiere, Alejo Carpentier, Jose Antonio Ramos, Lydia Cabrera, Nicolas Guillen, Dora Alonso, Nancy Morejon, Miguel Barnet, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Antonio Benitez Rojo, and Manuel Cofifio. As will be evident in our reading of these and other authors, the texts of Afro-Cubanism have from the movement's inception signaled the effort to redefine the "Cuban national identity"and often at the same time to redefine the very concept of "identity"with a language cognizant of the African contribution to that identity And from its own beginnings, as we will see, that African contribution to Cuban identity has been preserved and passed on in the wealth of Afro-Cuban religions whose beliefs and practices continue to give form and coherence to the AfroCuban legacy Yet since this dimension of Latin American literary culture has been ig nored or subject to frequent ethnocentric misunderstanding, I hope that my account will clarify the nature of Afro-Cuban religion both as background or subtext to literary texts and as itself a repository of narrative discourse. Chap ters 2 through 7, following an introductory chapter, are thus devoted to read ings of a range of twentieth-century Cuban authors who either have written down versions of the Afro-Cuban religious texts or have incorporated ritual, mythological, or doctrinal elements of the religions into their writings. In addition to literary, mythological, and folkloric works, these texts also in clude manuals and Afro-Cuban "hagiographies," which provide additional materials and interpretations for commentary, analysis, and further interpre tation. Recent theories of narrative will illuminate the use of Afro-Cuban religious sign systems (including myth) in fictional narrative, whereas ideas from performance and folklore theory suggest ways in which ritual pro cesses may be reconstructed for an ethnologically informed understanding of the literary text. In examining the aspects of Afro-Cuban ritual revealed in and by literary narratives, I will also consider the paradigmatic role of narrative in AfroCuban rituals of divination and especially the divination narratives known by the Yoruba-Lucumi designation patakis. The pataki is the recited or cited nar-

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iii o prefitt rative of the diloggiin or Ifa ritual; as a part of that ritual, it functions vari ously, by modeling behavior, offering counsel, and serving as a mnemonic device for conserving, organizing, and transmitting cultural information. Vari ous series of patakis discussed in the present study have been transcribed or summarized in printed form, where they signal the transition from an oral to a written or "print" culture. Once these narratives have been thus con served and fixed as literary texts, they become available for a formal and narcological analysis. In addition to the published patakis, printed collections of Afro-Cuban myth, folktale, and testimony also demonstrate the way an oral culture un dergoes a process of textualization in "becoming literature" and enters into another order or "economy" of signification, one that profoundly overdetermines the reception of that oral culture's artifacts. From the viewpoint of this second order or economy, however, a dialectics of inscription is shown to be already implicit within "oral literature" of the Afro-Cuban tradition, with the possibility that that oral literature's "transcription" into print, with its narrative refunctioning, may contribute to the undermining of the theocentric authority credited to sacred verbal utterance. By so fixing and objec tifying sacred discourse, the transculturation process of literary narrative sub jects that utterance to contact with the viewpoints, languages, and ideologies of other discourses and signifying practices, promoting in effect a dialogical relationship with other perspectives. In short, the language of religion as inscribed in literature becomes recoded, often for the sake of nonreligious ends. This asymmetrical dialogization between writing and sacred speech occurs most saliently, as we shall see, in the documenting and recontextualizing of Lucumi and Abakua liturgy in the nationalist narratives of the 1930s, in the neutralizing conversion of religious myth and doctrine into "folklore," and in the related portrayals of African-based religion for the end of affirming the goals and values of the Cuban Revolution after 1959. The signifiers of Afro-Cuban religion are thus dismembered, remembered, and transmuted with every literary reinscription. At the same time, a conservative countertendency within this transculturative process must be noted as well. A religion is an institution, and one of the functions of institutions is that of conventionalizing signification, of reducing ambiguity and checking the slippage of signifiers by establishing frames of reference and the protocols of reading. Such conventionalization encodes the institution's version of the real, constructing the Lebenswelt of its participants in that fashion. As they draw from real religious ritual, myth, and doctrine, Afro-Cuban literary narratives evoke the concentrating focus

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Prefcce o u that religion creates in its discourse practices, practices that give form and sense to the experience of those who profess belief in Afro-Cuban religion. Yet because not all readers are familiar with the signs of Afro-Cuban religious culture, literary interpretation must for their benefit reconstruct the ritual, mythical, doctrinal, and social contexts that made the signs meaningful in performance. If it reads and explicates religious signs as much as possible from the viewpoint of their institutional contexts, interpretation may on oc casion speak out of the silences imposed by the dominant viewpoints of the incorporating narrative or out of the gaps of the master narrative that has authorized the use of Afro-Cuban religious discourse for other, more classi cally rationalist or statist purposes. In reading against the grain of the text, or in expropriating the expropriating reading, Afro-Cubanist interpretation pro duces something "new": namely, a sign of internal difference that challenges and subverts the apparent, "authorial," or official meaning of the text. Or, to cite one of Lydia Cabrera's collected Afro-Cuban proverbs, interpretation may see and acknowledge that even textually, una cosa piensa el caballo y otra el que \o ensilla: the horse thinks one thing and the one who saddles him another. Many are those who along the way have given me the meansintellec tual, material, and oftentimes spiritualto write this book. My gratitude goes to Christiane von Buelow and John Carlos Rowe, great advisers. Lucia Guerra-Cunningham taught me Latin America s connection to theory. Maria Antonia Carrillo in Havana opened my eyes. Diana K. Metz's analysis of syn cretism in Cabrera set me on Eleggua's crossroads. Julie Minkler discussed many of this book's ideas over coffee and sarbos. Patrick Taylor, in writings and personal communications, has bottled the wine of astonishment like no other. Antonio Benitez Rojo and William Luis guided me like mentors, both through their writings and through their com ments on the manuscript. Emilio Bejel, Delitta Martin-Ogunsola, and Eduardo Gonzalez also read considerable portions of the manuscript, as did my friend and colleague Robert Bernard. Encouragement and counsel also came from Nancy Morejon, Manuel Zapata Olivella, Charlotte Bruner, Norma Wolff, David Roochnik, Berardo Valdes, Jose Rodriguez, and Susana Sotillo. Jorge Sanchez's tireless searching and typing provided the critical mass. Elias Miguel Munoz continued our never ending discussion on la cubanidad. Alex Leader and Michael Senecal at University Press of Florida contributed their invalu able editing skills. I thank all these friends, colleagues, and readers, acknowl edging that any errors appearing on these pages could be only my own and would bear no reflection whatsoever on their own considerable knowledge and high standards.

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iii o Prtfice Portions of my article, "TheYoruba Origins of Afro-Cuban Culture," from Journal of Caribbean Studies 10, nos. 1-2 (Winter 1994 and Spring 1995), have been incorporated into chapters 1 and 2 of this book. A portion of another article, "Self-Consuming Fictions: The Dialectics of Cannibalism in Recent Caribbean Narratives," from Postmodern Culture 1, no. 3 (May 1991), has been incorporated into chapter 5. To my parents, Ramona and Dalmacio Matibag, and to my brothers, Jose and John, and my sisters, Leticia and Julie: maferefun e ibae. And the love of Karen Piconi, Cris, and Tessa sustained me throughout the process by which this book was written.

I Jllre-Cubu Relifjoi ii Dorratife ... una multitud presentdndose en su misteriosa unidad [a multitude presenting itself in its mysterious unity]. Jose Lezama Lima, Paradiso At 9:00 P.M., when the cannon of La Cabana Fortress was fired, as it has been every evening since colonial times, many Havaneros would throw a bit of water out the front entrance of their homes and knock loudly on the door three times. The knocking was to drive away evil spirits, for everyone knew, and knows today, that the cannon belongs to Santa Barbara, the protectress of artillerymen and the double of Chango, the Yoruba-Lucumi god of fire and thunder. This and other accounts of African-based custom appear in Tomas Fernandez Robaina's Recuerdos secretos de dos mujeres publicas (Secret remembrances of two public women, 1983), in which the personal histories of two former prostitutes suggest the extent to which religious belief and practice have given form to Cuban experience since before the Revolution. Throughout Fernandez Robaina s testimonio, the "public women" of the title make other references to the signs of Afro-Cuban religion encountered or exchanged in daily experience, in particular the signs of Regla de Ocha (Santeria) and spiritualist occultism. The women go to santeios and cartomanciers for advice on their daily affairs; they read horoscopes in Carteles or Bohemia; they pray to the Yoruba-Lucumi god Eleggua for protection. Consuelo la Charme s devotion to Eleggua also includes lighting candles to him on Mondays, giving him caramels and cane liquor or aguardiente, and wearing his amu let or resguardo, which Consuelo "feeds" from time to time with sacrificial blood. When on one occasion Jehovah's Witnesses condemn the "images and objects" of the religion as "instruments of the devil," the women reply that they could not abandon their religion for without it they "would die." Consuelo adds, referring to the prostitutes who believed as she did, "We always flushed out the business house with purslane, abrecamino, white flowers

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2 o (tipterOit I. Eltf f i< kf the in\ it h si M driN, Siitiw it (iki, WL and essences of every kind; nor did we fail to put out glasses of water for the dead of our families and, especially, for our protector-guides, whether these be Francisco the Congo, the Indian, the Gypsy, the Nun or the Priest" (RSD 55-56). In another personal narrative recorded by Fernandez Robaina, a certain prostitute named Maria, nicknamed la Canosa, recalled opening up a restau rant as a cover for her brothel. Good times come to Marias business, and at the height of her prosperity Maria buys the gold jewelry that adorns her person as it honors the goddess Ochun, the deity who loves precious metals and revels in sensual pleasures. In yet another account, Consuelo describes a compared religious procession called La Sultana in the barrio carnival.That pro cession includes a Queen of Italy played by "very well-known santero," a Regla de Ocha priest, masked and dressed for the part (RSD 46-47, 63). These and other examples given in Fernandez Robaina's testimonio illus trate the quotidian presence of Afro-Cuban religion in Cuban social life be fore 1959.The practice of this religion, the examples show, was not reserved exclusively for holy days and places but formed a part of the fabric of every day life. It has had, and continues to have, a "fundamentally immanent char acter," as Isabel Castellanos characterizes it in her study of the Afro-Cuban "cosmovision" and popular song lyrics: "These are not religions of the 'be-

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Ifri-dliiMiiJNiilirrgtife o ) yond' but of the 'over here/ there is no aspect of earthly life that is not per meated by the active presence of the supernatural" (EQT 28-29). The "mas aca" and the "mas alia" of the quotethat is, the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine, the temporal and the eternalinteract and communicate normally in the world of Afro-Cuban religious experience. This book is a study of the treatments that Afro-Cuban religious experi ence has been given in modern narratives. Here we will explore the ways in which the signifying systems constitutive of that experience have been reenacted, recodified, analyzed, critiqued, and otherwise represented in Cuban stories, novels, and, to a more limited extent, poetry and drama. In this ex ploration, I will establish, in a series of analytical and interpretive readings, some analogies between Afro-Cuban modes of religious discourse and the representational strategies of narrative, especially prose fiction. The method I have chosen is to elucidate the religious content of Afro-Cuban narratives and articulate the function of Afro-Cuban religious elements in each case, while taking into account the forms and functions of literary elements spe cific to those narratives. In dividing my subject into chapters, I have classified its matter under headings that correspond to each of the major Afro-Cuban religious traditions. The very concept of "experience," I realize, has, like the related concepts of "subjectivity," "consciousness," and "perception," come under the post modern suspicion cast upon all phenomenological postulates based on the desire for a metaphysical "center." This desire would overlook the signi fying, constitutive, differential, and mediatory activities of a structure while putting faith in an immediate act of making the center present in perception or thought. Yet experience, on the contrary, is constructed in the production and transmission of signs, which substitute themselves for any center. In his critique of Husserl's phenomenology of signs, Jacques Derrida tenders the neologism differance to denominate the process of difference and defer ment inherent to signification and to what is experienced as "meaning." Language and other sign systems effect "meaning" not by immediate or ver tical relations of signifier/signified and sign and referent but by differance, the horizontal transfer-displacement of meaning from signifier to signifier. This semantic necessity, produced by radical differentiation and deferment of signs at the origin of perception or experience, puts in question the as sumption that either a noumenal referent or an ideal signified exists as such. Among the many implications of this anti-idealist, anti-empiricist theory of signs, cultures can be said to "mediate" reality by in effect creating it, pro ducing perception and experience in the very cross-referencing of signs that

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4 o (kotcrta makes use of consciousness as a personal nexus of apersonal semiosis (SP 88, 90-93). And yet, for all that, there is something that undeniably "feels like" expe rience, something I experience as experience even as I put in question this "I" that experiences. While putting such subjectivist categories within brack ets (or quotation marks), we must acknowledge too that the "subject" who "experiences" does not disappear altogether under the postmodern theoreti cal construct. Rather it finds itself situated, positioned, in particular signify ing systems that constitute the relationships of both the subject with the world and the subject with other subjects. Because there is paradoxically no immediate presence of things or meaning to the perceiving or thinking sub ject except through the mediating languages of culture, the "living present" of consciousness and perception depends on a "reading" of traces of past and future significations: the retensions and protensions of signs, as explained by Husserl's theory and Derrida's grammatology (SP 142-43). Religion offers itself as an example of a signifying institution that constructs the subject s experience as such by situating the subjectconceived as a "grammatical function"in the chains of signifiers that relay meaning (through retentive memory and protensive anticipation) and mediate the encounter of the subject with the object world inclusive of other subjects. Religion's own systematicity and relative autonomy make it, among other things, a complex machine for producing significations and for constituting the subject as a sign-processing, focalizing "function." The postmodern deconstruction of the subject and experience of religion does not annul them, but it discredits the assumption that they originate meaning and perception, precisely by situ ating them within systems that produce, authorize, and organize significa tion. The present study proposes a poetics, or systematic literary study, of the modern Cuban narrative texts, both fictional and nonfictional, that incorpo rate signifying elements of Afro-Cuban religions. References to textual seg ments will serve to exemplify Afro-Cuban religious ideas but with the un derstanding that the literary texts in question belong to a different order of discourse altogether, constituting what Rimmon-Kenan calls "junctions of various compositional principles" (Narrative 4). In consideration of this difference and construction, it will be acknowledged that the literary system or subsystem to which texts belong sustains relationships with a varied and heterogeneous sociohistorical context: that is, with the system s "outside," which is also, for the sake of knowledge, constituted textually, grasped as a series of junctions of compositional principles. It isTynjanov who describes

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lfra-(iiiikli|JMiilimtif( o J a "literary system" as "first of all a system of the functions of the literary order which are in continual interrelationship with other orders" ("Literary" 159). Engaged in such interrelationships, the orders of Afro-Cuban religion present themselves as a multitude of functions susceptible to being incorporated into and refunctioned in the heteroclite unity of Afro-Cubanist narratives. Those narratives may in turn be subsumed again within the broader literary and cultural sys tem that recontextualizes and refunctions elements, aspects, and motifs of the religious system that have been reworked in literature. In the light of these considerations, the present text will focus on three interrelated questions: In what distinctive ways have modern Cuban narratives addressed each of the major Afro-Cuban religious traditions? Which elements of Afro-Cuban religion have been incorporated into modern Cuban narratives? And, assum ing those elements and these orders originate in other signifying systems, what sort of refunctioning do those elements undergo within their new nar rative orders? In attempting to answer these questions, this study will trace some of the reflections, refractions, and rarefactions that Afro-Cuban religion has under gone in its literary recodifications, not only in folkloric transcriptions and versions of myths and patakis but also in the narrative fictionalizations of the novel and short story genres. This effort is guided by the homology between reading fiction and reading signs of the culture-world that Tzvetan Todorov formulates in his Introduction to Poetics; that homology, I believe, both illumi nates the nature of religious representations and clarifies the approach of this study. And although Todorov s assertion misleadingly suggests an unproblematic correspondence between narrative and experience, or between read ing and perception, his homology nonetheless indicates a fruitful direction for collating and connecting signs across literary and religious spheres. Todorov writes, "Just as we engage in an effort to construct fiction starting from a discourse, in exactly the same way the characters, elements of the fiction, must reconstitute their universe starting from the discourse and signs that surround them. Thus every fiction contains within itself a representation of this same process of reading to which we submit it. The characters con struct their reality starting from the signs they receive, just as we construct the fiction starting from the text read; their apprenticeship to the world is an image of ours to the book" (Introduction 55-56). In fiction, the subject apprenticed to the world of Afro-Cuban religion would construct a signuniverse in a manner that has similarities to the way we, delivered unto literature's form-giving language, construct a world in reading. By means of its synthesizing figures, in other words, Afro-Cuban fiction may reconstitute,

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i o (lifter OM within its own order and in an idiom proper to itself, a religion's prayers, myths, rituals, music, icons, dances, and associated lore and superstitions. Todorov s homology also suggests that, like literary fictions, religious images and practices signify by virtue of a willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the participating subject. The schools of critical theory issuing from the intellectual cultures called structuralism, poststructuralism, and narratology, to which Todorov has con tributed significantly, have given much credibility to the notion of reading reality as a text and indicate a method by which Afro-Cuban religiona cultural system, a discursive field, a space of semiosiscan be read as having made the text of itself into a reality, a simulacrum of a universe that replaces, for the subject s practical and cognitive purposes, the universe "itself." This method would be a tropological one for which the figures of a text are to be isolated and read as epistemological motifs as well as syntactical organizers. Joseph Murphy's study SonteriaiAfricon Spirits in .America has already presented a suggestive "way to organize the many different metaphors of divinity inYoruba religion" (my emphasis). Murphy's major metaphors are initiation, sacrifice, possession, and divination, and within Santeria they serve above all to honor the ancestors, to worship the orishas, and to order life (SAS 8). Religion's metaphors of divinity, as well as the "social dramas" (Turner) that are raised into religious ritual, serve to codify experience in a manner susceptible to textual recodification and interpretive decodification. Narrative texts, both within religion as myth and doctrine and outside religion as Afro-Cuban literature, participate of course in this recodifying and decodifying activity as they reinscribe, examine, critique, and reinterpret Afro-Cuban religion. A few definitions will help to delimit our subject matter. Religion is a cultural universal, a multiform human activity and institution, by which humans hold intercourse with the divine. It is a complex of collective beliefs and behaviors engaged in the worship of what is designated as "the holy" or "the sacred," always and everywhere distinguishing this designatum from what is considered "profane." Religion commonly addresses the mystery surrounding birth and death and usually teaches something about supernatural beings and a transcendent realm, bringing humans, through this process, into communication with gods or God, with the cosmos, and with one another. Religion also consists of instituted forms of worship that mediate the ex perience of humans with the divine, the cosmos, and other humans. From the perspective of cultural anthropology, moreover, a religion appears as a system of knowledge, or episteme, and as a complex set of patterned behav-

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Afrt-(itai RelifiM w krritite o I iors. Among its other functions, it gives a sense of meaning to its believers. It unites them into a community. It rechannels or sublimates instinctual drives into socially acceptable form. These functions are congruent with the schema of the six "dimensions" of religion outlined by theologian Ninian Smart. Smart's dimensions or categories comprising the key aspects of religion, which have helped to organize the argument of the present study, are the ritual, mythological, doctrinal, ethical, social, and experiential dimensions. To these I also add a seventh aspect or category, namely, a semiotic dimension, in which religion is constituted in and as a system of signs that pro duces experience, mediating the individual's encounter with the world as those signs refer to one another within a more or less coherent and self-referring discursive universe. Religion most clearly appears in this aspect as a languagethat is, as a mode of expression, communication, and aesthetic creation. This is not to say that religious phenomena themselves may be fi nally reduced to their linguistic or semiotic dimension as material signifiers but that at least their "principles of verbalization" may be recodified as dis cursive paradigms and decodified in interpretation (RR 1). In this frame work and perspective, what obtains for the informed reader holds true for the Afro-Cuban officiant as well: working inside the Afro-Cuban religious system, the babalaos or iyalorishas are hermeneuts who have the will and pos sess the competence to read signs generated by this system and to carry out interpretations and appropriate responses based on their knowledge of the system's codes. Studies in cultural anthropology and folklore have revealed that religion functions as the central, binding force of Afro-Cuban culture. Yet "religion" in the normative Western sense of the term does not do justice to the com plex system of systems that is Afro-Cuban religion, a comprehensive system that syncretizes, articulates, and reproduces extensive orders of knowledge in the areas of psychotherapy, pharmacology, art, music, magic, and narra tive. Numerous twentieth-century works of Afro-Cuban literature, appearing before and after 1959, refer specifically to the beliefs and practices of the major Afro-Cuban religions that will be considered in this book. Those reli gions are Regla de Ocha, known popularly as Santeria; \a Socicdad Seereta Abakud, often called Naniguismo; Palo Monte, or la Regla Conga; and la Regla Arard, the Cuban variation on Haitian V&udou. Such Cuban writers as Alejo Carpentier, Lydia Cabrera, Miguel Barnet, Manuel Cofino, and Severo Sarduy have sought to recodify the texts and rituals of these religions in narratives that, in effect, have contributed to the literary redefinition of a national identity, which is a principal obsession even of Cuban authors who have relocated themselves,

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t o Chapter tat for whatever reason, outside of Cuba. For all Cuban writers, Afro-Cuban reli gions have constituted a field of cultural subtexts; for the readers of those writers, a knowledge of that field is indispensable to making sense of a sig nificant body of Cuban narratives. As a special category of discourse that assimilates other "languages" or cultural codes into itself, literature defamiliarizesby its own "literariness," that is, by the mediation of its particular formthe modes of signification of those other languages. Through its literarization (and concomitant aestheticization), religion is made to lay bare the functioning of its unifying, uni versalizing, absolutizing principleswhat Kenneth Burke calls the "thor oughness" of religion's rhetoric of persuasionat the limits of language (RR vi).Two complementary processes come to bear in their mutual interillumination: religious rhetoric, relying on its figures of divinity or transcendence, comes to reveal a striking "literariness," whereas literary language comes to reveal the often muted assumptions of a theological nature implicit in its own forms of absolutization, either linguistic or metaphysical. This latter in sight recalls Nietzsche's observation, in Twilight of the Idols, to the effect that even if we have eliminated God, we still believe in grammar (48 3). Yet as the signs signifying God are taken up into new discursive contexts, they are remotivated by new "grammars": that is, they take on new and multiple signi fications within other frameworks, signifying not just "God" but "gods," but also not just words but the Word. Contrary to its own unifying, absolutizing tendencies, religion is also a diverse and sometimes divisive issue, motivating group differentiation and dissension. William James's pluralist reflections on the "varieties of religious experience" include the observation that the universe is "a more many-sided affair than any sect, even the scientific sect, allows for." Since a comprehen sive examination of different religious experiences would demonstrate the unavoidable conclusion that "the world can be handled according to many systems of ideas," we would do best to respect that diversity by practicing a scholarly eclecticism in studying them (Varieties 120). In examining the vari eties of experience associated with the aforementioned set of Afro-Cuban religions (Regla de Ocha, la Sociedad Secreta Abakua, Palo Monte, and Regla Arara) in twentieth-century Afro-Cuban literature, I elaborate, following Ed ward Kamau Brathwaite, the premise that religion provides a unifying focus to Afro-Cuban culture, a culture in which the texts of symbolic performance play a central role in storing and trmsmitting knowledge, creating consensus, forging identity, and forming community. As illustrated in the references made by Fernandez Robaina's informants at the outset of this chapter, the

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IMikiillelifJNiilirrfti!! o f unifying discourse of the supernatural in Afro-Cuba has undergone a double cultural reprocessing. In the course of its evolution, African-based theology has availed itself of metaphors drawn from the everyday realm. The things of quotidian reality provide the language that makes the metaphors of divin ity: segments of reality become rcalia, which evoke a transcendent realm of essences and archetypes. Once they are sufficiently formulated, the now divinized metaphors of this theology sooner or later enter into the talk and thought of Cuban peoples, in Cuba and abroad, becoming a part of that culture sometimes called "folklore" or "subculture." This reciprocal move ment of signs continues in the circulation of empirical terms that come to serve religious purposes and in the secular use of religious terms that be come common currency in Cuban speech.' The Afro-Cuban Palimpsest In "The African Presence in Caribbean Literature," Brathwaite challenges the Eurocentrist assertion that the Africans brought to the New World in the slave trade lacked any culture that was not imposed by the slaveholding colonizers. Far from being, as was believed, too primitive or dependent on the domi nant culture to develop its own languages of custom, African culture, notes Brathwaite, underwent a process of "transference" to a new setting and "ad aptation" to a new environment. The integrity and vigor of that culture owe much to its particular "culture-focus," its "distinguishing style of characteristic": African culture is above all religious, and "it is within the religious net work that the entire culture resides" ("African" 104). That network is an entire "cultural complex" in which religion is inextricably interwoven as a centralizing and foundational construct. Brathwaite's religiocentric concept is also organicist: with everything tied to religion, no discipline within this culture is separate from another. Religion, art, and practical sciences, con ceived in other social spheres as distinct forms of cultural expression or dis ciplinary technology, are considered in Afro-Caribbean culture to take part in the same activity. Brathwaite s general theory of African religion in the Caribbean suggests a useful framework for organizing more specific knowledge about the subset of Afro-Cuban religion. Brathwaite distinguishes five "interrelated divisions" or aspects of religion, all of which will be reiterated in my treatments throughout this book. Those divisions are worship, rites de passage, divination, healing, and protection. In defining the first category of "worship," Brathwaite negates the Euro-Christian assumption of a congregation's passive, "monolithic relationship" with God. He valorizes in its stead the Afri-

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II o (kiptcrkt can concept of celebration, in song and dance, of the orishos or gods. That is, the African and Afro-Caribbean practice a social, physicopsychical, interac tive form of worship often involving vigorous bodily movement and possession. Healing and protection as obeahmagicmeans more than "mumbo-jumbo." It involves a profound knowledge of the medicinal qualities of herbs, plants, and foods and an understanding of "symbolic/associational procedures" by which the causes of disease may be identified and eliminated (Brathwaite, "African" 105). Antonio Benitez Rojo in La isla que se repitc (The repeating island, 1989) echoes Brathwaite s view in asserting that "the influ ence of Africa in the nations of the Caribbean is predominantly religious in the totalizing sense" (162).That is, African-based religion there functions in "totalizing" by gathering, involving, ordering, translating, and mastering the disparate phenomena of existence and experience into a more or less cohe sive system. At the same time, the African influence in the Caribbean and particularly in Cuba is varied and multiple. Robert Farris Thompson, in a suggestive pas sage of Flash of the Spirit, characterizes Afro-Brazilian religious history in Rio de Janeiro as a "palimpsest marked by Kongo, Yoruba, and Roman Catholic infusions" (FS 77). If a palimpsest is a document, inscribed on vellum or parchment, that contains several messagesthe earliest of which have been imperfectly erasedthen Thompson's metaphor perfectly describes the situation in Cuba, where, as in Brazil, religious history is a layering of super imposed markings left by distinct religious traditions. In Cuba as well, the infusions come from a variety of cultures: Kongo, Yoruba, Calibar, Dahomeyan-Fonand Roman Catholic-Spanish, among others. The chal lenge for any reader of that multiply inscribed parchment is to recover the texts of those overlaid, partially erased, partially reconstituted and recombined religions. In approaching the strata of religious sedimentations in mod ern Afro-Cuban narrative, one must also consider the manner in which that narrative itself adds yet another layer to the Afro-Cuban palimpsest. One pe culiarity of this layer would have to consist in what could be called its metareligious viewpoint: that perspective of a writing that reflects and comments on the means of religious signification. The religious culture-focus manifests itself even in those texts in which religious belief and practice are not domi nant concerns, in which references to characteristics of Afro-Cuban religion may stand as the hallmark of authenticity or seriousness. Jorge Castellanos and Isabel Castellanos identify the characteristics shared by Afro-Cuban religions in their comprehensive Cultura afrocubona (vol. 3), on which I base much of the following presentation of Afro-Cuban religion's

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Uri-(ikiiR(IWHiiIirritif( o || identifying features. The list below, in addition to defining the characteristics fundamental to the major Afro-Cuban religionsRegla de Ocha, la Sociedad Secreta Abakua, Palo Monte, and the Regla Arara, among othersalso pro vides some theoretical considerations under each heading. In all Afro-Cuban religions, then: 1. Monotheism and polytheism are combined. Godsthey include orishas, santos, mpungus, ngangas, vaudoux, and espiritusare genealogically or ontologically linked with a supreme god. William James provides a clarify ing note here in his definition of polytheism as a pluralistic vision of a uni verse, one "composed of many original principles/' as long as those prin ciples are seen as subordinated to the principle of the divine (Idowu 58). All orishas are emanations of Olodumare or Abasi or Nsambi or Mawu. More on specific conceptions of the gods in this book will come under each chapter's section on the religious pantheon. 2. An active supernatural power comes from a divine source and can be invested into objects. This power is called ache in Lucumi, and the name roughly translates as grace, virtue, spirit, power, cachet, and sometimes luck. "Through the consecration," writes Cabrera, "which is to say, through the transfer of a superhuman force to an object, the latter takes on personality, acquires the power, the ache of the god or of the spirit who pays attention to him" (YO 156). Ache, similar to the impersonal mana of the Polynesians, works according to the belief that objects may be animated with a force that gives them sentience and personality. When theYoruba religious system, un der the conditions of slavery, was made to coalesce with the Catholic reli gious system, the resulting Reglas Lucumis retained the notion of ache as that metaphysical substance inspiriting and consecrating matter in accord with ritual properly carried out. Such investment of powers, marked by the appropriate signs, plays its part in determining the critical difference be tween the sacred and the profane. Ache corresponds to a creative notion of language as well: the imperatives "Be" or "Come to pass" are implicit in the word, more literally translatable as the "power-to-make-things-happen." In saying "Ache," one says the equivalent of "So be it," "May it happen" (FS 7). Ache is also regarded as an ontological foundation. In Pierre Verger's descrip tion of ache in "The Yoruba High God," it is "Power itself in an absolute sense, with no epithet of determination of any sort. The various divine pow ers are only particular manifestations and personifications of it" (SAS 147n. 7). Ache thus names a monistic, unifying principle underlying the multi plicity of forms. As personifications of this unifying, energizing ache, the orishas of the

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12 o (lipter IM Lucumi tradition inhabit the sacred stones or otoncs, and for that reason one must wash the stones and feed them a regular diet of blood or the herbal mixture called omiero, both of them rich in ache. The preparation of eggshell, boiled and ground up, becomes coscahlla or cfun.This efun, its whiteness sym bolizing purity, is "the universal conductor of ache," used in many Lucumi rituals (SAS41, 79, 80,83). 3. Rituals, numerous and complex, mediate relationships between hu mans and gods. These rituals are performed in ceremonies of initiation and in divination, spiritual trances or possessions, sacrifices, cleansings or limpiezas, healings, and thanksgivings. Subsequent chapters will include expositions on the varieties of Afro-Cuban ritual, but here I would like to elaborate some key notions for the explication of its symbolism. Victor Turner's conception of a "syntax" organizing symbolism in African religion suggest a method for explicating scenes of ritual such as those de picted in Afro-Cuban prose fiction. In his article "The Syntax of Symbolism in a Ndembu Ritual," Turner finds three "major dimensions of significance" in ritual symbols: the exegetic dimension, or explanations of symbols by informants; the operational, which consists in their use by participants and their associated affective states; and the positional, reading off the symbol's placement within the series or cluster of other symbols in the same struc ture. Furthermore, Turner elaborates the three bases he attributes to the symbol's exegetic significance, namely: the nominal basis, or "the name as signed to the symbol" both within and outside the ritual context; the sub stantial basis, consisting in the material and natural aspects of the symbol; and the artifactual basis, involving the manner in which the symbol is worked upon in the culture ("Syntax" 125-26). Sacrifice is one ritual readily explicable by the exegetic, operational, and positional dimensions of its symbols. To speak exegetically, sacrifice feeds the divinities, releasing the ache of the sacrificed animal and gaining the favor of the orisha to whom the petition is made. A subtext of tradition and myth determines the nominal, material, and artifactual bases of the sacrifice: only the prescribed animals, agents, instruments, and procedures may be em ployed, often denominated with their West African (for example, Yoruba, Efik, Kongo, Dahomeyan) names. Operationally, the symbolic act of sacrifice puts life into an abstract schema of the petition to the god. It simultaneously binds the community together by staging an act of violence that averts vio lence among members of the community, assigning a scapegoat value to the sacrificial offering. The sacrifice inspires the participating subjects through a histrionic sense of seriousness and perhaps also by clarifying guilt and carry-

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Afrt-Cibii RCIWM ii Itrritifc o II ing out expiation. Positionally, or in terms of the syntactical significance proper, the symbolic acts of ritual take place in their proper sequence, an invariant temporal order whose ritual repetition harks back to an original instance of the ceremony. 4. Divination is one privileged ceremony practiced as an integral part of the Afro-Cuban religious culture, with diviners consulted for all major junc tures and events of the lifespan. The major oracles are the obi or biague, divina tion with four pieces of coconut; the diloggun or sixteen-shell divination; Ifa divination, which uses either the ikine palm nuts or the more common ckpuelc chain, cast only by the babalao; and the mpoka horn of Palo Monte, with its smoked mirror of revelations. In operational terms, divinatory practices can be called subsystems of symbolic reproduction, manipulating combinatory schemes by an aleatory procedure for producing and organizing information. That information is given in the form of counsel, which typically in cludes diagnostics, prescriptions, and prognostications. In giving counsel, diviners retell indicated sacred narratives selected from a body of narratives belonging to the particular divination system. The divination ceremony thus brings believers together with the personnel of the religion for the purposes of communication and in so doing gives coherence and significance to the rituals, doctrine, and mythology of the religion as well as to other aspects of its encompassing culture. In Afro-Cuba, the most popular oracle is the sixteen-cowrie divination, or diloggun, on which I will comment at length in chapter 2. A sort of mediumistic divination also takes place in the ritual of possession, where the possessed subject speaks with the voice of the possess ing god or "saint." 5. Magic, which includes conjurations or spells and herbal or ethnomedical therapies, is practiced to solve problems or to secure some aim desired by clients, in whom a magical predisposition toward the universe is produced by the myth, ritual, doctrine, and social structure of the religion. "Magic is the great preoccupation of our blacks," writes Cabrera in El monte (1954), "and the obtainment, the control of powerful occult forces that obey them blindly has not ceased to be their great desire" (16). The magic of spells, called ebbo in Lucumi and mayunga in Congo, which control events by means of sacrifice and the use of charms, seems to work toward gaining the love of another or for repelling another; for inflicting harm; for attracting luck; for achieving success in business; for cursing another's business enterprise; and for curing disease. In the light of semiotics, such magical operations work in accordance with a logic of rhetorical tropes, according to their own figural "language." That

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14 o Chapter One language is constituted in detours or deviations from ordinary language use that effect a shift of meaning away from the literal, denotative significations of words. More specifically, magic operates in a manner analogous to the literary significations organized by the master tropes of metaphor and me tonymy, along with what is sometimes called the subclass of metonymy, syn ecdoche. This poetic substructure, of identifying one thing with a similar thing (metaphor) or one thing with a related thing (metonymy) or the part with whole (synecdoche), constitutes the hidden logic of spells and charms. Roman Jakobson, following Frazer, synthesizes this tropological system in his influential essay "Two Aspects of Language." For Jakobson, metaphor and metonymy vie for dominance in any symbolic process, either intrapersonal or social. Thus in an inquiry into the structures of dreams, the decisive question is whether the sym bols and the temporal sequences used are based on contiguity (Freud's metonymic "displacement" and synecdochic "condensation") or on simi larity (Freud's "identification and symbolism").The principles underlying magic rites have been resolved by Frazer into two types: charms based on the law of similarity and those founded on association by contiguity. The first of these two great branches of sympathetic magic has been called "ho meopathic" or "imitative," and the second, "contagious magic." ("Two Aspects" 80-81) Jakobson could be faulted for placing only "similarity" in the camp of "iden tification and symbolism" since metonymy or displacement can function to identify or symbolize as well. Yet Jakobson's association of metaphor with similarity on the one hand and of metonymy and synecdoche with contigu ity on the other holds up as a useful distinction for classifying forms of symbolization. In Afro-Cuban religious practice, homeopathic or imitative magic works by way of analogy or resemblances under the law of metaphor (or similea metaphor using "as" or "like"): performing a ritual on a portrait or effigy of a person amounts to performing an operation on the person so represented. Contagious magic works by way of contiguity or imputed causality, under the law of metonymy (or synecdoche): performing an operation on a person's belongings or even the person's name also signifies the will to do the same to the person so represented. Synecdoche in particular functions by treating a part of a person as representative of the whole person; this part could be some strands of hair, fingernail clippings, or blood. In the Palo Monte nganga, or cauldron-charm, a skull often represents the dead spirit controlled by the

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Afro-Cuban Reiigion in Narrative IS charm and thus draws in that spirit s power for use by the ngangulero, or Palo Monte priest. In the logic of narrative itself, both metaphor and metonymy perform analogous symbolic operations in the formation of utterances and in the or ganization of narrative functions. Metaphor, obeying the law of similarity, is the trope of selections, substitutions, or condensations; metonymy, working by virtue of contiguity or contagion, is the trope of displacement or combi nation. The operations of these master tropesmetaphor, metonymy, and synecdochethus account for the "magic" of narrative causality and symbolization as well. 6. Music and dance have a prime importance in the liturgy They function, over and above the role of providing ambience or background, to supply a language of worship, a form of prayer, and a vehicle for entering into the state of consciousness that allows an extraordinary mode of perception. The protagonist Menegildo of Alejo Carpentier's jEcue-Yamba-O! (1933) is described as singing the yambu or the sones of the famous Nanigo Papa Montero during the toques de tambor, or drum-playing parties, also called guemileres, that he fre quents. Repetition in the verses of the sones creates "a kind of hypnosis"; the drums in the battery form a "magnetic circle," producing what the narrator calls a "[pjalpitating architecture of sounds" (EYO 50). In La musica en Cuba (Music in Cuba, 1946), Carpentier gives a more ana lytical characterization of Lucumi and Nanigo singing. A soloist leader and chorus or two semichoruses sing antiphonally, the chorus(es) doubling the part of the leader. Each chorus sings in unison or octaves in long notes ex tended against the busier polyrhythms of the drums. Often the melody is based on one of various pentatonic scales, lacking in semitones (MC 296). Rhythmic percussion, dance, and repeated chant-formulas in the guemileres, by modifying the frame and focus of consciousness, produce a new organization of perception and signification, an altered state of con sciousness that recenters thought and feeling. In his "Deauto-matization and the Mystic Experience," Deikman finds that a "deautomat-ization of cogni tive structures" takes place in the altered state. Cognitive hierarchies are re shuffled, "sensory translations" occur, for "the undoing of automatic per ceptual and cognitive structures permits a gain in sensory intensity and richness at the expense of abstract categorization and differentiation" (Deikman 224). Normative ratiocination cedes to the language of the un conscious. The psychological operation of deautomatization found in musi cal activity, I would add, bears much in common with Viktor Shklovskfs formalist notion of ostranieni"estrangement" or "defamiliarization"as the

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M o Chapter Oie operation specific to literary art, that of making things appear as new by "creating a particular perception of the object, creating its vision and not its [mere] recognition" (Shklovski 65). Music and dance are furthermore the vehicles for bringing on the state of consciousness propitious to possession by the initiate's orisha.The relation ship of the dynamic arts to worship is based accordingly on the coding of musical rhythms and danced gestures to the identities of each of the gods. 7. The worship community is a dispersed collectivity whose members consider themselves members of the religion but not of any church. There is no central authority ruling over the Regla de Ocha: as one informant tells Cabrera, "We have no Pope!" (YO 132). Although Afro-Cuban religions dis play defining characteristics of religious "institutions" (in purposive organi zation, "clergy," customs, gatherings, sites), believers do not constitute a "homogeneous community." This is because worship is individualized, sub ject to endless reinterpretation, and community-centered rather than ecclesi astical, that is, taking place at homes and in other spiritual gathering places, with active participation of members (CA 3:16-17). Authority is nonethe less invested in the spiritual leaders: santeros, santeras, iyalochas, babalaos, mayomberos, paleros; all the plazas of the Abakua society; the houngans, bokors, mambos, and hounsis of theVaudou-Arara society. In addressing these seven broadly defined categories of Afro-Cuban reli gious belief and practice, this study employs a semiotic approach to studying Afro-Cuban religious experience and its discursive-practical foundation. Semiotics, the science of sign systems, follows the structuralist model of Ferdinand de Saussure's synchronic analysis of the language system. In that analysis, the principle of difference is regarded as that which determines the values of individual functions in any symbol system, both among the func tions themselves and with relation to what is considered outside the system. Difference is inherent in all the systemic characteristics of the above list, predi cated as they are on the exegetical and operational distinction between the supernatural and the earthly, the sacred and the profane, the true and the false, the inside and the outside, the authentic and the inauthentic. Such char acteristics, occurring in all the distinct Afro-Cuban religious systems as so defined by differences, must also be produced and reproduced: ritual, myth, doctrine, and even experience viewed as "within the religion" must be re peated in order to exist as such. Repetition and reproduction, inherent in any symbol system, thus underwrite the apparent uniqueness of any artifact, symbolic act, experience. For the symbols, motifs, and figures of Afro-Cu ban religions, signification means not only repetition but also repeatability:

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Afr-ikii ReliffM lirrftite o 1/ all signs "written" and "read" in religious practice are so executed within the structure of reiteration, in a process that recognizes as authentic what is an imitation or repetition of an original or primordial act remembered in the religion s mythology.2 A method that accounts for signifying structures and processes in AfroCuban literary narratives must "read" them as texts that reiterate or interpret signs from other texts written in the varied languages of religion, culture, and literature. Literary semiotics would thus produce an interpretation of what are already interpretations: a reading of previous readings. In assuming that reading "reads" what others have read and "written" in various sociocultural codes, the semiotic notion of the language system and reiterable discourse practices guides us in regarding theology as a field of knowledge "of god" or the divine, a field consisting in a study of the repeatable figures organizing and reproducing the text of worship. And although the mystery of religious experience may never be illuminated in full by such a reading of the conventions on which that experience depends, the informing rhetoric of mystery can certainly be read and analyzed in its verbalizations or figura tions of the divine. The figurations of Afro-Cuban religion refer us back, let us recall, to its beginnings in the slave experience in colonial Cuba. A partial overview of the history of that experience will help to contextualize subse quent readings of Afro-Cuban religious phenomena. Oriins: Geographical, Ethnic, aid Social Sylvia Wynter situates Caribbean religions in a continuum whose two ex tremes represent the predominance of either European or African elements and whose middle represents an amalgamation of elements from the two continents (cited in Lewis 189). Castellanos and Castellanos' model of Cu ban culture in particular also projects a continuum stretched between the two extremes of European and African cultures. Between these extremes lie the intermediate "poles" of Euro-Cuban culture and Afro-Cuban culture (CA 1:12-13). This gradient of cultural difference is useful for identifying the origins and degrees of cultural influence in phenomena that include religion. Martinez Fure writes that the African slaves, by their "fidelity to the ancestral" (the expression is Roger Bastide's) successfully resisted assimila tion into the white Creole culture of, first, the colonial slaveholders and, later, the national bourgeoisie. In keeping alive an ancestral culture through the semi-covert practice of their religions, the slaves and their descendants preserved a source of resistance against the humiliations of forced labor, preju dice, discrimination, and other forms of oppression. It was in the process of

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It o (lipter IK cultural mixing that this resistance occurred, precisely by taking objects, terms, practices, and narratives identified with European and African ethnic groups and making them over into ingredients of a "national culture" (DI 208-9). The area between Senegal and Angola yielded the most piezas de Indias or slaves to the prosperous slave trade, and among them the Yoruba exerted perhaps the most pervasive influence on the slave groups and their descen dants in the Americas (YSN 1). Other vigorous traditions beside the Yoruba took root in the Americas, however, sometimes grafting their beliefs and practices onto the trunk of the Yoruba tradition. The following brief over view of the ethnic composition, historical background, and social organiza tions of the African peoples brought over to Cuba in the nearly three hun dred years of the Atlantic slave trade will provide a useful background for mapping the multiple origins of Afro-Cuban religion. The African slaves brought to Cuba represented more than twenty tribal groups, and the peoples of at least four African regions were substantially represented in the Cuban slave population. The six principal groups came to be known by the names Lucumi, Mandinga, Arara, Ganga, Carabali, and Congo. The classifications and profiles in the following list are drawn from Castellanos and Castellanos (CA, vol. 1), Bolivar Arostegui (OC), Cros Sandoval (RA), and others. There seems to be some disagreement over the categorization of certain groups, and keep in mind also that many slaves were named for their port of departure rather than according to the name of their geographic origin. The six principal slaves groups, then, include: 1. The Lucumi. They proceed from the Yoruba of southwest Nigeria and the so-called Slave Coast and from Dahomey, Togo, and Benin. In Nigeria, the Yoruba states include Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, and Lagos as well as part of Kwara state (Eades 1). Culturally similar but not politically united, the Yoruba in cluded peoples known as the Agicon, Cuevano, Egba, Eguado, Ekiti, Fon, Oyo, Sabalu, andYesa (OC 20). 2. The Carabali. These were the peoples of the Calibar in what is today southeast Nigeria and southwest Cameroon, among whom the Efik and the Ibibio stand out. The Carabalis also included the EjaghamHispanicized as Abaja or Abakuathe Bras, Brikamo, Efor, Ekoy, Ibo, and Oba (OC 20). 3. Those who trace their origin to Dahomey and the western part of Nige ria, including the Ashanti and the Fanti. They are grouped together as the Arara, whose name originated in the kingdom of Arder or Ardra, today known as Benin, home of the Ewe and Fon peoples (CA 1:31). From the west and northwestern parts of the Ivory Coast came the Bambara, Berberi, Fulani,

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Hfri-(BNiReli0iNiilirritif( o If Hausa, Kissi, Kono, Mani, and Yola. Diaz Fabelo's list of the Arara includes groups that Bolivar Arostegui calls Lucumi, namely the Agicon, the Cuevano, and the Sabahi (Diaz Fabelo 24). A people associated with the Dahomeyan-Fon were called Mina because they were passed through the station of San Jorge de Mina, in Fanti territory on the Gold Coast. They were also related to the Ewe peoples called Popo (CA 1:31). 4. The Congos. Originally, they were slaves drawn from the Congo Basin, which extends through present-day Congo-Brazzaville, Angola, Cabinda, BasZaire, and Gabon (RA 19-20). From the Guinea Coast down through to the former Belgian Congo, those who would come to be called Congos or Bantus in Cuba included the Ashanti, Fanti, and Mina Popo. From the Congo Basin came the Agunga, Banguela, Bisongo, Cabinda, Mayombe, Mondongo, Motembo, and Mucaya (OC 20). 5. The Mandinga, grouped in Cuba with the Bambara, Diola, and Yola peoples, inhabited the upper Niger and the Senegal and Gambia valleys. The Islamic Mandinga showed an Arabic influence in their syncretic religious be liefs and in the ability of some to write (CA 1:30-31). Carpentier attributes Mandinga ancestry to Mackandal, leader of the slave revolt in El reino de este mundo (The kingdom of this world, 1949). 6. The Gangas. From the coastal and interior regions of Sierra Leone and northern Liberia, the Gangas were further designated by the name of their "nation," such that the subgroups of those called Ganga were called Gangacramo, Ganga-quisi, Ganga-fay, Ganga-gora, Ganga-bandore, Ganga-yoni, Ganga-iiongoba, and the Ganga-tomu. Their origins since clarified, these peoples have been divided into the Gangas associated with the aforemen tioned Mandingas and the Gangas called "Bantoid," from the Nigerian pla teau (CA 1:32-34). Cabrera identifies theYoruba and the Bantu, as do Bastide and other au thorities, as the two most influential African groups imported in the slave trade from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. These peoples were known in Cuba respectively as the Lucumi and the Congo (M 8). Martinez Fure has noted and cataloged the African languages that have survived and been disseminated into the Creole speech of Cuba up to the present. The languages in question fall primarily into two families: the Sudanese, spoken primarily in the western part of the island, and the Bantu. Belonging to the first of these families, Yoruba or Lucumi (also called Anago) is spoken by the practitioners of Regla de Ocha or Santeria. Efik is spoken by those of the Abakua or Nanigo society; Fon or Arara by the groups known

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21 o (kipttrfM as Araras. The second language family, Bantu, is that of the Congo or Palo Monte cults. Many Cubans are capable not only of reciting but of holding conversations in one of these African languages. Martinez Fure adds that al though it is in these languages that one speaks to the orishas in Cuba, many words and expressions have filtered down into the common idiom (DI 203-4). As Castellanos and Castellanos point out, no one is sure whether Africans first came aboard the caravels on which Columbus and his crew crossed the Atlantic, but black servants probably accompanied the hidalgos who arrived in 1493 with Columbus's second expedition and most likely came with Di ego Velazquez in his conquest of Cuba in 1510-11. It is more certain that Portuguese slavers first landed in Guinea or at the Gold Coast of western Africa in 1510.They soon began exporting slaves, mainly through the port of Lagos, with Cuba and Brazil as principal destinations (CA 1:19). Carpentier's researches find that blacks were transported to Cuba since at least 1513. Two Genoese sailors brought 145 Africans from Cape Verde, and by 1534, there were already about a thousand on the Caribbean island (MC 37). In 1531, the Spanish crown increased the demand for African labor by decreeing, first, the end of Indian slavery; then, in 1532, the release of Indi ans who had earned their freedom; and finally, in 1552, the release of all the Indians commended to the haciendas. The freedom of the Indians in Cuba, many of whom were to die of mistreatment or European diseases anyway, created the need for a labor force coming from elsewhere (Fagg 16). The slaves were purchased in Africa with money, or with goods, generos, such as sugar, tobacco, rum, guns, gunpowder, beads, cloth, machetes, or iron bars. Once they arrived in the Caribbean, they were traded for sugar and rum, which were transported to Europe so that the entire cycle of a "triangular trade" route could begin again (CA 1:22). The European slave trade with West Africa increased dramatically with the growth of the American sugar plantations. Once this industry took off, de mand for African labor skyrocketed in Brazil after 1550, in the Caribbean and South America in the seventeenth century, and in North America in the eighteenth century (Eades 28). Cuba along with other colonies underwent a process that has been called amulatamiento, or "mulattoization," with the ar rival of hundreds of thousands of slaves between 1517 and 187 3.The Cuban census of 1774 reported a population of 96,430 whites and 75,180 pardos or blacks. Out of that last number, 44,300 (or 59 percent) were slaves. From 1819 to 1850, blacks in Cuba would outnumber the whites by about 100,000 (MC 89; DI 207-8; Curtin 34). Fagg asserts that in 1817, out of some

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Itri-dNiMifiMiihrritiie ]| 552,000 inhabitants in Cuba, 313,000 or 57 percent of them were nonwhite (Fagg 27). Philip D. Cur tin estimates that out of his calculated total of 9,566,000 slaves transported during the Atlantic trade, some 4,040,000, or 42.2percent, were destined for the Caribbean islands, and that some 702,000 of those, or 7.3 percent of the worldwide total, were taken to Cuba (Curtin 88-89). Castellanos and Castellanos estimate a higher minimum of 850,000 slaves brought to Cuba in the three and a half centuries of its existence.^ Some five hundred ingenios or sugar mills were in operation on the island in 1790. Then, with the outbreak of the Saint Domingue Revolution in Hispaniola in the 1790s, the price of sugar shot up. The market was ready for a new producer, and Cuba was there to supply the demand. Entrepreneurs invested in the construction of new mills and in the importation of new slaves from Africa. To fill the demand in the booming industry, Knight reports, Spanish traders brought some 75 percent of the slaves to the colony in the nineteenth century, when most other nations had ceased to participate in the trade. Cuba's monocultivational sugar economy began to boom only in this period, for it had previously been more a "colony of settlement" than of "exploitation," although that fact certainly changed with the accelerated im portation of slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ferdinand VII, under pressure from the British, decreed the end of the slave trade by 1820, but a clandestine trade continued until 1886 (Fagg 25, 27, 30, 41; Knight 66). Although the British outlawed the transport or landing of slaves in their colonies in 1808, and although the trade was in fact officially terminated in the Spanish colonies in 1821, at least 436,844 bozales or new slaves entered the island between 1790 and 1875, during the height of the islands agricul tural development. This traffic went on despite the protests of the British and the emancipations in French territories (SRL 36). Whereas the American South could rely on a self-reproducing slave popu lation, the Caribbean region generally depended on the continual importa tion of new Africans for labor power up past the mid-nineteenth century The constant influx guaranteed that new infusions of West African language, folklore, customs, liturgies, and art forms would arrive to enrich and strengthen the life of slave religion in the islands (Lewis 189). Slaves in Cuba, and espe cially in the urban concentrations, could find a degree of comfort and relief from the rigors of forced labor in certain refuges within slave society, sites where they could practice their neo-African religions under a facade of Catho lic orthodoxy. In this infrasocial space of circumscribed freedom, the slaves could associate with their fellows, communing and communicating in the unique Afro-Cuban cultural dialect of a "nation" refounded.

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11 o (inter OM MlNMl Several aspects of colonial society promoted the transplantation and growth of Yoruba, Congo, and Nanigo cults in Cuba. A first contributing factor was the founding of numerous setdements known as palenques by the run away slaves, known as cimarrones. In the palenques, located in the hills of the Escambray or the Sierra Maestra, the cimarrones built up their own syncretic, neo-African microsocieties. In these precarious and embattled redoubts, the runaways, banded together, conserved and reconstructed an African cultural legacy that sustained an oppositional sense of identity. Second, the large num ber of slaves concentrated in the cities could be hired out or employed in trades or industries such as shipbuilding, carpentry, or smithing. Such work gave some slaves the opportunity to earn and save the means to buy their freedom through the practice called coartacion, or manumission, which con sisted in the paying of a preagreed upon and published price. By the middle of the nineteenth century, a sizable urban population made up of slaves and former, or manumitted slaves, known as gente de color (people of color), could freely gather in the cabildos and develop their vital culture, complete with rites, indoctrinations, and celebrations reconstituted from the surviving rem nants of a shattered African legacy (CA 3:110-15). In Hispanic culture, the word cabildo usually denotes the municipal coun cil or its meetings; it also refers to a cathedral "brotherhood" chapter. Cros Sandoval traces the institution back to the time of Alfonso el Sabio (1042-1109), who required all members of the Sevillian population, including Af rican slaves, to group together in guilds and fraternities (RA 44). An agrupacion (group, chapter) or cofradia (confraternity) of free blacks of Nuestra Senora de los Remedios was founded in 1598 in Havana (MC 290). Ortiz writes that such cabildos were organizations of mainly freed blacks of the same nacioncs or ethnic groups, and that the oldest member was often the leader, the capitdn dc cabildo (or cabildo captain), although in Cuba some of the more organized societies met in houses outside town under the rule of "kings" and "queens" ("fiesta" 6). In Cuban societies as well, assemblies made collections to pay for funeral expenses of members and at times for the manumission of aged slaves. It was often in the comparsas, or costumed parad ing groups, that cabildos carried out street celebrations devoted to the patron saints (SAS 30). Amidst the festivities of carnival, dances and processions dedicated to particular orishas further contributed to the survival and dis semination of a neo-African culture in the bosom of a colonial Catholic society. The names of these societies attested to their founders' African origins.

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Afrt-CibflH RelifiM IB Itrrative o I] Carpentier lists the following cabildo names: "Arard, Apapd, Apapd Chiquito, Mandinga, Oro, Lucumi, Carabali Ungri, Nacion Mina Popo de la Costa dc Oro, Arard tres ojos, etc/' (MC 290). While bringing the benefits of security, association, and entertainment into its marginalized space within Cuban society, the cabildo, it should be noted, served the purpose of the colonizers' "divide-and-rule" policy, pro viding a means of diversion and thus averting revolt by grouping members in these self-regulating organizations (Bastide 9). Yet as the cabildos de negros gained in familiarity and numbers, they also gained some clout in local gov ernment. In 1573 in Havana, cabildos had a voice in the municipality (L. Foner 148^-9). Measures taken by the Cuban church further promoted the religio-cultural evolution of the cabildo blacks. The Constitution Sinodal, promulgated by the Havana diocese in June 1680, required the instruction of all slaves in Catholic doctrine, their baptism within one year of their arrival in America, and that baptism as the prerequisite to marriage by a priest. It also required that marriages outside the church of people baptized afterward be ratified in facie ecclesiae (DALC 99, 141-2; Klein 94). These requirements further en couraged the founding, growth, and limited empowerment of cabildos and cofradias in the major Cuban cities. The members of each cabildo were normally negros de nacion, blacks of the same ethnogeographic origin who in their mutual propinquity could keep alive not only some of their African traditions but their own language as well. What the church unintentionally made possible by organizing the slaves into cabildos was therefore a combining and transformation of cultural be liefs and practices: a synthesis and hybridization proper to Creole social groups that, after the pioneering work of Fernando Ortiz, has come to be widely called "transculturation." Trusciltortti*!: Syncretism ad Syntheses Fernando Ortiz is referred to as "the third discoverer of America" (after Co lumbus and von Humboldt). He followed the lead of nineteenth-century writers such as Jose Antonio Saco and Domingo del Monte in investigating the blacks in Cuba: their history, art, religion, livelihood, and language. The result of Ortiz's labors was to make what was once scorned and dismissed as a bastard culture of a downtrodden people into an object deemed worthy of intellectual scrutiny (VU 7). For Ortiz, the process of transculturation was typical of all Cuban culture and essential to an understanding of cultural

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24 o (ttpterfit change. In his Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar (Cuban counterpoint of tobacco and sugar, 1940), Ortiz defines that process to which the lives of millions of African slaves were subjected on American lands: We understand that the word transculturation best expresses the different phases of the transitional process from one culture to another, because this consists not only of acquiring a different culture, which is what the Anglo-American word [acculturation] strictly indicates, but rather that the pro cess also necessarily implies the loss or uprooting of a preceding culture, which could be called a partial decuituration, and in addition, signifies the consequent creation of new cultural phenomena that could be denomi nated as neoculturation. Finally, as the school of Malinowski well sustains, what happens in every embrace of cultures is what happens in the genetic coupling of individuals: the offspring always has something of both pro genitors, but is also always different from each one of the two. (Contrapunteo 134-35) Transculturation names the process by which a culture constitutes itself as a crossing, combination, fusion, and mutual transformation of two or more preexisting cultures. In the process, cultures are uprooted and new cultures are formed. The concept repudiates the tracing of cultural descent to any one nation or ethnia, questioning previous notions of cultural superiority based on racial "purity." For Ortiz, the African contribution to Cuba was present in the island's art, religion, and collective temperament ("factores" 32). The New World in general was a place where traditions would combine and transform one another. To give one example of a religious tradition that underwent transculturation: in Nigeria, the association and the family lin eage are traditionally identified with the particular orisha regarded as the "ancestor" of the group, revered by generation after generation. When sla very shattered the African family structure, however, only the basis of wor ship in associations survived. The structure of this worship changed as well, for no longer could a fraternity devote its cult to a single orisa, as in Nigeria, for the association or "nation" felt obliged to worship all the orishas, and all in a hierarchized sequence of rituals. Cabrera confirms that in Cuba, unlike in Nigeria, one worships "all the Orishas," starting out with the Santos de Fundamento or Santos de Entrada (Saints [Orishas] of Fundament or Saints of Entry). Worship is therefore not strictly limited to the orishas of one's lineage, although there will be one or more saints to whom devotion is concentrated for different purposes on different occasions. The distribution of worship to all the orishas within each of the associations makes each association a mi-

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UMBkiiReliiiefliilirntive o 15 2.M(kii|i/Siitilirkirr(ilii cut is, 1991. Ctltectiii ff Atrfi ABtoaii (irrilU, Old IITIII, (iki. crocosm of a nation. Furthermore, that worship is not restricted to the temple, the ilc ocha, but extends into the home, with its domestic shrines (consisting of asientos or ritual settings devoted to particular orishas) and altars (YO 130-31). The African nations, now gathered into the Cuban cabildo associations, indeed kept alive theYoruba, Mandinga, Carabali, and Bantu gods, but these underwent further modifications in Cuba (Bastide 94, 116). In theYorubaLucumi tradition, to give one example, the orishas became reduced in num ber, took on the characteristics and identities of minor Yoruba gods, trans muted themselves in symbiotic connection with their Catholic doubles, and developed new family ties among themselves (CA 3:22-23). Since the syn cretism of Yoruba-based representations meant not only the joining of orishas with saints but also the gathering of the orisha-saints into a single practice of worship, Cuba became a space of narrative transformations and iconic evo lutions, as the ilc ocha, "home of the orisha," took the place of theYoruba holy grove, the igbodu (SAS 52, 113).

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U o (kiptcrtit We should recall at this point the political origins of the word syncretism in synkretismos: the Greek word designates the federation or union of Cretan cities against a common enemy. There is a defensive and even militant strengthening implicit in the word that continued on into the dynamics of slave ideology and Creole culture, since it formed a defensive and consensual basis for communication across cultural boundaries. Cabrera quotes one of her informants, called "the mother of OmiTomi," as saying, "Lucumi, Arara, Dahomey and Mina, all are akin. All understood one another although their languages were different. But their Saints are similar. They would go from one land to another" (M 26n. 1). We should keep in mind that there was already a syncretizing transculturation taking place in African mythology even before its Cubanization.TheYoruba Ogun had already become the powerful Zarabanda among the mpungus, or Kongo deities. This Zarabanda gives his name to the most powerful of magic charms, the aforementioned nganga or prenda made of bones, cemetery dust, blood, sticks, and other powerful objects kept together in a metal cauldron (S 132). The specific courses of this transculturation invite closer examination. In the matching of a Yoruba with a Catholic, Bantu, or Ewe-Fon equivalent, a transfer of qualities may also take place, as in the way Babalu-Aye takes on the humility and gentleness of the Saint Lazarus with whom he was con joined. On the other hand, the two sides of the equation may maintain their separate identities for the most part, as in the case of Chango and Santa Barbara. The coupling of these figures from distinct traditions does not re quire that they interact very much: not so much a blending as a juxtaposition or imposition of appearances takes place. Such adjacencies or layerings allow "the African elements to impose themselves with an extraordinary purity in the initiation, divination or funerary rites" (FV 138). Diana K. Metz explains these alternative processes as the branching out of cultural mestizajc, or mixing, into two contrasting forms designatable by the terms "symbiosis" and "syncretism." Whereas both terms name modes of cultural convergence, symbiosis consists in a heterogeneous combining that respects the separate identities of the participating elementsa "striping." Syncretism would amount to a blending and refounding that transforms the elements so that often in the process they become less recognizablea "gray ing." Following Metz s definitions, one could impose on symbiosis the law of juntos pcro no revueltos: together but not "mixed up." The syncretized orishasaint on the other hand is neither one nor the other but an alchemical com bination, "una deidad novisima" ("a brand-new deity"; MS 13). Metz also suggests that the very syncretic character of Santeria and of a Cuban Creole

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Ulre-dbMReliiiiiiilirriliie o 1/ culture demands a strategy affined to that of Derrida's differance in order to track its shiftings and readjustments. This syncretizing process may also engage other cultural systems besides the African and the European. Benitez Rojo traces the multiple vectors of the myths that became the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, Cuba's "patron saint." As Benitez Rojo's analysis explains, the Virgin s wooden statue, discovered in the Bahia de Nipe by the "Three Juans" and giving rise to the legend, was not only the Cuban icon representing the Spanish Virgen de Illescas but also the Yoruba Ochun Yeye Moro and the Taina goddess Atabex or Atabey, who derived previously from the Arahuacan goddess Orehu, "Mother of the Waters." These three divine personalities did not however merge into one but maintained their separate identities as three-figures-in-one-entity Deducing from this Cuban archetype, Benitez Rojo correctly concludes that "A syncretic artifact is not a synthesis, but a signifier made out of differences." Precisely because the Virgin was discovered in the Bahia de Nipe by the "three Juans"Juan Cri-ollo, Juan Indio, and Juan Esclavoshe "belonged" to the three ethnic trunks of the Caribbean genealogy and thus "represented a magic or transcendental space" of their meeting. In essence, la Caridad "mythologically communi cates the desire to attain a sphere of effective equality where the racial, social and cultural differences created by the conquest could coexist without vio lence" (IR xvixvii, xxviii, 27).The Afro-hispanoamerican myth offers a sym bolic resolution of social contradictions. The same Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre occupies the transcendental and maternal space of the Creole image in Lezama Lima's Paradiso (1966), in which protagonist Jose Cemi s mother is remembered as one who "jumped from dreams to the quotidian without establishing differences, as if she would to go off by herself, walking on the water." In this Creole space of fluid sym bolic metamorphoses, the Catholic quotidian is permeated by the magical, and the magical is saturated with Afro-Cuban motifs. Before a small altar set up in their living room, senor Michelena and his wife Juana, of the same novel, pray to the Virgin to give them a child, for, after all, "to whom but to the Order of la Caridad, foundation of all our religion, can one beseech su perabundance?" The supplication itself takes the doggerel form of a thirteensyllable couplet (a trecisilabo) asking for fecundity: "Virgen de la Caridad, de la Caridad / dadnos \a fecundidad, oh fecundidad" ("give us fecundity, oh fecundity"). Later, la vieja Mela tells her son that sefiora Munda will cure her asthma by the agency of the same virgin and a seahorse (Lezama Lima 27, 53, 54, 1 20). Devotion to the saints, spirits, orishas, mpungus, and egunguns (Lucumi for "the dead") constitutes a practice of centering a personal system (or

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It o Cliptcrtat "economy") of signs around the image of a transcendental signified, itself susceptible to displacement by other signs. The self consecrates and thus de fines itself on the altar of this devotion. Thanks to the Catholic contribution, the virtue of "saindiness" meant that slaves could find happiness not in "com fort," to quote William James again, but in "a higher kind of inner excite ment" leading to tranquillity, such that "when we are in need of assistance, we can count upon the saint lending his hand with more certainty than we can count upon any other person" (James 361). A Catholicism mixed with African beliefs and practices thus earned the name of "afrocatolicismo." These transcultural aspects of slave religion, we should recall, had their practical function in a sociohistorical context, for it was slavesconsidered by their masters to be no more than chattel, labor, property, and investment who practiced it, finding in their worship the means to compensate or even to negate the negations of their dehumanizing enslavement. SUfe Relioien as Ideelegy In the preface to the 1993 edition of his historically based novel The African (1967), Harold Courlander explains that religious beliefs have given blacks in both Africa and America "a sense of relationship to the world around them and to the unseen but living forces of the universe" (ii [unnumbered]).This sense of relationship, as numerous writers have observed, has profoundly shaped the nature of black participation in the politicosocial processand with mixed results. Anticipating his own critique of rationalism in future narratives, Carpentier in jEcue-Yamba-O! pits the Afro-Cuban worldview against the Cartesian method and attitude. The opposition in Carpentier s text makes historical sense: al though the typical Caribbean planter in the time of the colony was no phi losopher, as Gordon K. Lewis points out in Main Currents in Caribbean Thought, the planter shared with the Cartesian mind a certain "religious indifferentism" or secularizing disposition that produced the peculiar forms of indi vidualism, voluntarism, rationalism, and hubris characteristic of his class. The subject/object relation may have confirmed in his mind the legitimacy of the master/slave relationship. Different foundational assumptions under lie the contrasting worldviews as well. Whereas the Cartesian mind, finding only clear and distinct perceptions to be truthful, values conclusions arrived at empirically and experimentally, the Afro-Caribbean mind finds the truth in oral narratives.4 Lewis elaborates these contrasting notions of knowledge: "The one perceives the universe in terms of scientific laws, the other sees it in terms of laws that can only be apprehended by means of therapeutic or

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Afrt-CibiB Religion ia Rflrrative o li redemptive episodes in ritual and ceremony that constitute, as it were, sce narios of the transformation, in essence magical, of personal states." Lewis's dichotomization emphasizes "Cartesian man's" tendency to abstract, divide, and compartmentalize the phenomena and institutions of the world. "Afri can man," however, has never renounced an experiential, ritual, and subjec tive involvement with the life of the world, for which everything fits into a single designpossibly a cosmological ecosystemsuch that "life and ex perience are unified in one domain of knowledge and understanding in which past, present, and future fuse into the awful mystery of things" (Lewis 196). Bolivar Arostegui describes the traditionalist and animist assumptions of this unifying, magical thought: each corner of the universe is infused with personalizing spirit responsive to the appeal of magic; all things are alive and sentient, imbued with ache; and yet every thing is unique, with its own "individuality." Every locality and time has its own particular character within the "subjectivized," non-Newtonian cosmos: "The sensual experience of space and time reveals them to us as heterogeneous and discontinuous: there exists the space of the valley and that of the cave, the time of happiness and that of joy and sorrow, there is no equal time nor identical spaces for the subjective experience." Bolivar Arostegui affirms the distinction between modern scientific thought and "primitive" magical thought in declaring out right that magic "bases itself in purely fictitious relations" and that it "elabo rates its illusory technique and its mythical dominion upon a fictitious knowl edge" (OC 26-27, 29). Others have held that this knowledge has more than a compensatory or illusional importance. For Zapata Olivella, Afro-American religions have func tioned as cultural expressions directed toward emancipation. They express the "creativity of the black under oppression," as the title of one of the chap ters of Zapata Olivella s Las claves mdgicas dc America (The magic keys of America) proposes. The Afro-Cuban comparsa, the carnival street procession presided over by an elected king and queen, manifests the Africans' custom of making of their "body, mind and shadow a living temple erected to their Ancestors and Gods." Afro-Caribbean cults, Zapata Olivella points out, united and emboldened blacks in the Saint Domingue revolts and in other countless anticolonial uprisings. Such examples illustrate that in a hostile American envi ronment, where identity has meant not only to be somebody but to survive, African slaves had these psychospiritual resources, "religious arms," to rely on, and they relied especially on those resources that drew strength from the deified Ancestors. Even the frequent acts of suicide among Carabalis, Fantis,

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)0 o CbipterOic Sereres, and Ibos can be accounted for as acts of resistance in obedience to ancestral codes that valued an honorable death over the ignominy of slavery The African saw himself or herself as a "depository of the life of the ancestors" and struggled against every kind of "infrahuman exploitation" because the offense of slavery was an offense not only to the individual but to all the individual's ancestors (Zapata Olivella, claves 117, 145, 60). Confirming Zapata Olivella s vision of Afro-American religion as mani festing creativity under oppression, Lewis finds in slave religion an "ideol ogy" that negates the masters' ideology The culture of the African slave in the New World was "denied expression in either economic technology or political structures," yet it "found its classic, architectonic expression in the proliferating secret Negro religious cults." In their war against such cults, which they considered to be forms of idolatry and paganism, missionaries throughout the Caribbean attempted to instill their doctrine in the name of Catholic proselytization, usually in support of the proslavery ideology. The same missionaries did not by and large realize how slaves could appear to embrace the dogma and lore of the church by adoring Chango in the red robes of Santa Barbara and Obatala in the white robes of the Virgen de las Mercedes. Colonial officials learned, however, that the cults would die hard and that efforts to suppress the practice of their rituals would provoke re sentment and revolutionary backlash. The alternative was to allow a coexist ence of religions, such that the blacks could continue celebrating in their comparsas (processions) or batds (fiestas with drumming).Tolerance for some degree of religious diversity became the unwritten policy (Lewis 188, 195). Lewis, citing J. N. Figgis's From Gerson to Grotius, a study of church/state conflicts in the Middle Ages, asserts that political liberty in the Caribbean "was the inheritor of an unofficial concordat between the Christianity of the slavocracy and the neo-African belief structures of the slave populations." The antagonism between proslavery and antislavery ideologies ceded to this cold war accommodation between African and European worldviews. Lewis perhaps overstates the case for an "Afro-American religious ideology" in the Caribbean, with the exception of Haiti, in claiming that it was engaged in "mortal struggle" with European ideologies, "waged as bitterly as any war of religion," for outside of Haiti religious ideology has tended to serve more as a compensatory philosophy than as a call to arms, more as a restorative adhered to covertly, leaving the fundamental life conditions of the slaves un challenged (Lewis 196, 190). This was especially the case in Cuba, where practices of Santeria, Naiiiguismo, and Palo Monte never led their believers

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Ifre-dNiMiifiMiilirritiK o fl into a full-scale anticolonial war. This absence may in part have induced Carpentier, still regretting the youthful errors of jEcue-Yamba-O!, to choose the colony of Saint Domingue as the main setting of El rcino it este mundo. For in Vaudou, slave religion has had a more direct, although varied and problem atic, relationship with historical change, an issue I will address in chapter 6. It would seem that Cuban culture in the first half of the twentieth century could accept and assimilate African-based mythical and religious thought in its collective representations. In Walterio Carbonell's view, it was the inher ent weakness of the dependent Cuban bourgeoisie, due to the imperialism that forced a change from the colonialism of the Spanish to an economic neocolonialism of Wall Street during the early years of the Republic, that made the middle class susceptible to the influences of the African culture that had survived since the slaveholding colonial days. "The savage gods, the eat ers of children, Chango, Obatala.Yemaya, were civilized and took possession in the spirits of the well-to-do, not in order to eat them up nor to cohabit with them, but in order to try to solve their amatory problems, their aspira tions to occupy a high government position, or to pull them out of business difficulties." This sentimental dependence on black mysticism is reflected in Benitez Rojo's satire "El escudo de hojas secas" (The coat-of-arms of dry leaves, 1969) in which a middle-class Cuban couple relies on the advice of a babalao to make their fortune, precisely by winning the national lottery. In Afro-Cuban religion prior to 1959, the "nongoverning" bourgeoisie could find the com pensations and assurances that their economic situation could not afford them. Even before this prerevolutionary period, however, the bourgeoisification of Afro-Cuban myth was an ongoing process that involved the trans lation into Castillian of West African narratives. Parallel transculturations oc curred in music and dance (think of the mambo, rumba, and son) once those art forms were mainstreamed and then internationalized, and the new Cu ban culture ended up becoming more openly "una gran pachanga" (a great party) with the blessings of the Cubanized African gods (Carbonell, Critica 24-25). The sign systems of what originated as slave religion, and certainly much of those systems' imagery and language, carried over into another transform ing context, that of the literary movements known as negrismo and its particu lar Cuban variant, afrocubanismo. I turn to these in the chapter 2, after examin ing some of the semiotic and phenomenological implications of Afro-Cuban sign systems in the following sections.

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fl o Chtpter One Afro-Coban Religion in Narrative The signifying systems of Afro-Cuban religions, codifying the cultural world for and of their subjects, have also provided terms for reinscription into liter ary language. As I proposed earlier in this chapter, when literature reinscribes ritual, myth, doctrine, and the personal experience originally "scripted" by those religions, it offers a phenomenologico-semiotic reading of signify ing mechanisms engaged in the shaping of that experience. For the healing arts, a symptom is a metaphor that the curandero (healer), santero, babalao, iyalorisha, houngan, mayombero, or paleraall semioticians after a fash ionmay read. Myth serves as the narrative foundation of ritual and doctrine, as symbolic charter for the ethical and template for the personal. In Frye s illuminating theory, mythos as narrative "involves movement from one structure to another." This movement is a process of formation, matura tion, conversion, or transformation, and it corresponds analogically to the cyclical pattern of development, death, and rebirth or its analog in the yearly progression of the seasons (Frye 158). Afro-Cuban narratives imitate this movement between structures in portraying ritual and in retelling myth, reinscribing both into narrative prose, thus providing a subtext upon which the idioms of novels and short storiesother layers of the palimpsestac quire the depth of stratified and mutually cross-referencing levels. In reconstructing an architectonics of each religion in later chapters, I schematize the systematic arrangement of its knowledge and "technical arts," emphasizing above all the agency of language in constituting religion as a transcendent realm or a world apart. The primacy of language, or the privi lege of that which is accessible and intelligible by transposition into lan guage, becomes evident in the multilingual order of Afro-Cuban narrative texts: texts that typically take pains, as it were, to teach the readerthrough appositional definitions, footnotes, glossaries, and translationsthe sacred language of the religious tradition in question. Previous discussion of Afro-Cuban religions, even in anthropological treat ments of the subject, has often devolved into a vocabulary of essentialist as sumptions, hypostatizations of abstract or immaterial entities, and uncritical descriptions of mystical phenomena. It is natural for the analyst's writing to identify, even if ironically, with the believer's language of faith, but previous summaries of and commentaries on magical narratives nonetheless have of ten produced the effect of affirming their referentialist illusion. What is needed is a metanarrative of that illusion, one that examines the springs and levers of its referentialist machinery. This approach calls for a supporting theory of narrative structuresa narratology

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l|ro-(ubflnR
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14 o (hpterlit aforementioned transcriptions or retellings of the myth, legend, fable, or divination narratives, which are rewritten as folktales and short stories (in Lachatafiere, Cabrera, Ortiz, Barnet, Martinez Fure, Alonso, and others); nar rative or poetic reenactments of the ritual and other practices expressive of faith and worship in the African-based religions (as in Carpentier, del Valle, Ramos, Cabrera Infante, Granados, Coflno, Sarduy, Hernandez Espinosa, and others); and the narratives of personal spiritual or social experience taking place within the context of the subcultures associated with Afro-Cuban worship (as in Fernandez Robaina, Isabel and Jorge Caste llanos, GonzalezWippler, and others). Mythical narratives are common to all the Afro-Cuban religions and translate readily into literary text. With the possible exception of the Regla Arara, where the function of myth is minimized, myth, as stated earlier, generally serves to provide a precedent, a background, a subtext, and a charter. In literary form it continues to give reasons for ritual, doctrine, social relations, custom, and even personal experience, for what is personal may conform or respond to the archetypal paradigm. Whether patakis of the Lucumi tradition or kutuguangos of the Congo, mythic narratives so recontextualized continue to play their part in preserving and transmitting the knowledge of the group, most formally in depictions of divination rites, most informally in inclusions of anecdotes and scenes of storytelling. De spite their status as sacred stories, patakis and kutuguangos, I hope to dem onstrate, are susceptible to narratological analysis and interpretation. By reducing sacred narrative to the "spheres of action" defined by Vladimir Propp in his Morphology of the Folktale (1928), we may construct a model that isolates and then integrates their "functions." Propp s functions are so con ceived that a particular character may take on several functions either simul taneously or consecutively; that several characters may comprise one actant (for example, the "town" or "townsfolk"; the omorde or women all taken together); and that representations of animals (Chameleon, Guinea Fowl, Sheep) or other creatures (Stick, Cotton) may be incorporated into narrative as actants. A. J. Greimas s reduction of Propp s thirty-one actants to six, in Structural Semantics, helps to organize the analysis of other narratives such as patakis. Adapting Greimas s practical schema of six actants to the narrative analysis, one grasps an underlying framework of functions and recurring patterns. The Subject seeks an Object: for example, the Hero seeks the Grail, Chango seeks control over the Tabla de Orula (the Ifa divining board), Eleggua seeks to test and then chastise Obi for his arrogance, the calabash seeks the favor of Ochun, and so on. Another narrative opposition exists between the Sender

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Alro-Cokaa Reliaioi ii Rfrralive o B sender object receiver helper subject opponent I Biiirj ipMsitiiis ii iirntif e (f rn (reira). and the Receiver in communicative or transferential propositions: God sends the Grail to humanity; Obatala sends the Ifa to humanity; Aganyii Sola sends his son, Chango, to his mother, Yemaya; Obba sends the amala stew with her ear to Chango; Eleggua sends the alcyos or non-initiates away from Orumila's ilc and to another Eleggua ready to read the diloggun, and so on. A Helper and an Opponent enter the picture and readjust the power relations between antagonists. The Helper, the ally who facilitates communication and mediates desire, may be a god. The Opponent, who places an obstacle in the path of the Subject, is sometimes concretized as the mischievous Eshu-Eleggua (see Greimas, Structural 207-8). Some of the complexity of narratives on and of Afro-Cuban religious dis course resides in their implicit notion of the author as the voice of a collec tivity. In the system of Afro-Cuban literary production, the author appears not so much as an original creator or receiver of divine inspiration as com piler, mythologic polymath, ethnologist, and reporter: Lydia Cabrera antici pates a Miguel Barnet and carries on the work of Ortiz before her in collect ing and transcribing the testimonies of many participants in a set of related events. As Cabrera puts it in the preface of El montc (The mountain), "The only value of this book ... consists exclusively in the very direct part that the blacks themselves have taken in it. It is they who are the true authors" (M 10). Cabrera's role as transcriber and literary artist also has had a reciprocal impact on the religious culture she depicts in writing. As Joseph Murphy states in his article discussing Regla de Ocha in the United States, Cabrera, "by her transfer of the oral wisdom of the elders into print, . has partici pated in the transformation of the religions themselves" ("Lydia Cabrera" 246). Cabreras classic El monte presents us with related special problems of generic classification. Reading it, we pause to ask: what is it? It is only in part a collection of testimonies, a kind of Afro-Cuban anthology. One is tempted to put it into the category of folkloric literature, but its prescriptions and narratives of beliefs, practices, and ritual remove it from the category of the purely aesthetic: this is a book to be used. El monte seems at times a work of

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U o (kiptcrOit cultural anthropology due to its wealth of pharmaceutical and therapeutic information. It is a classic sourcebook of folk medicine, as Morton Marks notes in his article "Exploring El Monte: Ethnobotany and the Afro-Cuban Sci ence of the Concrete." Cuervo Hewitt confirms that many have come to con sider the book to be "the Bible of Afro-Cubanism" and likens Cabrera's myth and folklore-filled stories to theYoruba oracle. Furthermore, continues Cuervo Hewitt, "the work of Cabrera is a mythopoetic, mythical and historical charade, which breaks with the traditional seams that hem it in in order to hurl itself into a wild race through the vast field of the literary imagination" (APA 7,8). One of the most appealing aspects of Afro-Cuban religions, grounded in the centralizing symbolicity manifest in their narratives, is their unifying, holistic vision of nature, culture, and the divine as harmoniously interactive and mutually supportive. Religion establishes a human and cultural relation with the supernatural, that which is seen as above or superior to the natural yet immanent within the natural as its potential for fulfillment. Lezama Lima conceived of a nature that must "attain supernature and counternature" (350). Since religious language and other signs mediate that impulse to tran scendence, one must account for the principles of those religions' internal organization and coherence as sign systems directed toward attaining supernature and counternature. System Centered and Recentered All Afro-Cuban religious systems share a supernatural vision of the world that accepts the life of divine beings and their interactions with the living. Also common to all of these systems is what James Figarola calls the "prin ciple of multiple representation": that is, their semantic tendency to signify the same referent or signified by varied symbols, objects, names, or figures. Such manifold representations include the different names of a mythic ele ment or ritual or the "plural crystallizations" taken by a supernatural force or deity in the mind. Multiple representation accounts for the different "mo dalities" that representation takes: Yemaya has sixteen caminos (literally roads) or avatars, Eleggua more than twenty; Chango appears as female or male, and so does Obatala. Divination performances in Cuba often refer to religious figures by their hagiographic counterparts. Multiple representation also func tions as an articulating subsystem within magic-religious systems, connect ing what would otherwise appear as disparate elements (SMD 13-17). The notion of "multiple representation" conforms to C. S. Peirce's con cept of "limitless semiosis," by which the "interpretant"roughly, Saussure's

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l|re-(B^Reli0ioiiilirritiu o )l "signified"must refer to a second signifier that must be interpreted by a third signifier, which yet must be interpreted by a fourth, and so on ad infinitum (see Eco 133). Yet multiple representation maintains the operation of a uni tary principle, a centering function that draws the shifting signifieds toward a privileged signifier. The concept of the fundamento provides this centripetal function, a nucleus for gathering together heterogeneous elements within each of the varieties of Afro-Cuban religious experience. In normal usage, fundamento means foundation, basis, grounds. In theYoruba-Lucumi tradition, the word designates the collection of stones, otanes, in which the ache of the orisha is absorbed and held. In the Abakua tradition, the fundamento is the sacred drum called Ekue; it holds and releases the voice of the Supreme God Abasi. For the Mayomberos, the fundamento is none other than the spiritcontrolling cauldron called the nganga or prenda. For the scrviteurs of the Arara, the same foundational function could be fulfilled by the stones or by altars consecrated to specific loas, or by the central post, the poteau-mitan, that holds up the peristyle dance area of the houmfort temple and connects this earthly stage with the divine realm. The fundamento is not in itself a center but a centering device, a focal point or bridge through which the subject is brought into the "presence" of the mythic and divine source (SMD 56). As I have previously argued, the specificity of each Afro-Cuban religion as a system of signs arises from extrinsic and intrinsic processes of differentia tion: the reUgious system, like a language, differentiates itself from other systems; the religious system, like any dynamic structure, constitutes itself by internal differentiation. Saussure asserted that in language there are no substances, but that the differences between phonemes, their negative rela tions with one another, assign them a place in the system. Consonant with Saussure's seminal insight, the concept we may apply here is that all AfroCuban religions are readable synchronically as different signifying "systems of functions."5 James Figarolas semantic analysis thus contributes an inven tory of the traits that differentiate the Afro-Cuban religions or reglas.To touch on one example that I will discuss at length in chapter 5, the Reglas Congas (such as Palo Monte Mayombe) stress the relation of the priest or initiate to the "center of magic power," which is identified as the nganga cauldroncharm or the cosmogram inscribed at its bottom.This centering feature, James Figarola points out, makes the Reglas Congas distinctive within the AfroCuban cultural universe, indicating the necessity of this particular system to "fold in on itself [plegarse a si mismo], in order to prevail, given certain adverse circumstances, with its own profile within the Cuban religious spectrum" (SMD 56, 58).

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H o (kipterOu Figures of centering abound in other discourses on and about Afro-Cuban religions, and here I would like to address two of the forms it takes: the centering that has posited the Yoruba-Lucumi religious system as the para digm for organizing Afro-Cuban religions in general and the positioning of the subject and the organization of consciousness with relation to a center in the religious sign-world. Lachatanere, Cuervo Hewitt, and others have stressed the predominance of Lucumi religion over other Afro-Cuban religions by virtue of its popular ity and its role in providing mythical and ritual structures to other religious traditions. Bastide concurs with Lachatanere's notion that the culture of a particular African ethnia may predominate in a given area. This phenomenon has taken place in the Brazilian Bahia state, where the theology of theYorubabased or Nago religion called Candomble has prevailed over all other religious systems by providing the framework for the syncretization of Dahomeyan, Gege, Angolan, and Kongo traditions. As in northeast Brazil, Yoruba culture in Cuba and in Trinidad exerts a "determining influence" and "dominates all the rest" of the transplanted African cultures, including the Calibar and Kongo. A similar conformation to the pattern set by Dahomey-Fon culture took place in Haiti (Bastide 11-12). The Yoruba-Lucumi element in Afro-Cuban religion has arguably consti tuted an architectonics of cultural signs: a totalizing symbolic order sug gested by Adebayo Adesanya s characterization in "Yoruba Metaphysical Think ing." In that article Adesanya states, "from the Olodumare an architectonic of knowledge was built in which the finger of God is manifest in the most rudimentary elements of nature. Philosophy, theology, politics, social theory, land law, medicine, psychology, birth and burial, all find themselves logi cally concatenated in a system so tight that to subtract one item from the whole is to paralyse the structure of the whole" (Adesanya 40). The concat enations or interrelations of the disciplines in the Yoruba system have carried over, albeit in attenuated form, to Afro-Cuban religious cultural systems. The notion of architectonic unity does not however account for the complica tions that arise in the process of Afro-Cuban syncretism, by which religious systems tend to be supplemented or reconfigured with elements from other systems. Lucumi religion or Santeria is not reducible to its own "system" because it came into being as an amalgam of different components from different systems. James Figarola corroborates this point in stating that none of the Afro-Cuban religious systems can be found "in its pure form" due to "crossing and mixing" (SMD 54, 68). In effect, the interrelationship of the Yoruba system with other systems decenters its mythology and doctrine. To

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UMiNiMifiMiilirritiu o counteract the "Lucumi chauvinism" that has prevailed in Afro-Cuban reli gious studies, we must account for the welcome encroachments of other religious traditions into what has been called the "orisha tradition" (com pare TO 12).The Lucumi predominance has obscured the vital contribution of other West African religious traditions transported into its architectonics, especially the Bantu-Congo, the Calibar-Abakua, and the Dahomeyan-Arara. Afro-Cuban narrative, in view of this intrinsic otherness within Afro-Cu ban religion(s), promises to reveal a cultural dynamic that cannot be reduced to the structuralization of the Yoruba-Lucumi system. With various relations to the Yoruba-Lucumi paradigm, each Afro-Cuban religious system differentiates itself internally and externally by its selection and constitution of figures, motives, and symbols. Each religion accordingly presents its own dominant modality of symbolization, the systemic regular ity that will be elaborated in each of the following chapters. With each domi nant modality of representation, as indicated in multiple representations cen tered on the fundamento, goes a specific attitude toward the supernatural. James Figarola, in Sobrc mucrtos y dioscs (On the dead and gods), charts these different attitudes in the following manner. Regla de Ocha emphasizes the believer's affectionate relation of devotion to his or her orisha, the orisha who has chosen him or her. The Vaudou practiced in Cuba, called Arara, encourages a fearful attitude toward the loas, for whom one strives to fulfill obligations (formulated as taboos or promises) or against whom one seeks to obtain the assistance of other loas. Palo Monte, more than Regla de Ocha and Regla Arara, is centered on the cult of the dead. One's dead, if properly approached, will bring life and power. James Figarola explains that the dead in Palo Monte constitute "the point of support, or that in which the forces of everything that exists join together; the catalyzing factor that opens the life, the closed-up life, which was dead until this moment, of the most diverse materials" (SMD 81-84). Such identifications of dominant traits are useful in making broad distinguishing characterizations of the three listed religions, but we must also recognize that, upon closer examination, each of the three reveals traits similar to those attributed to the others. Similar to Palo Monte, orisha worship has its cult of the ancestors, the egun, who often become orishas themselves. Additionally, one orisha may be invoked to defend against the harm inflicted by another, as happens in Regla de Ocha, and the serviteurs of Vaudou may establish close, often affectionate relationships with the loas or gods they serve. The devotees of Palo Monte would never forget their ob ligations to the mpungus or spirits, each one associated with a correspond ing orisha. James Figarola also overlooks the persistence in Cuba of the Abakua

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41 o (iipttrlie religion, whose pantheon of spirits is virtually the same as that of Regla de Ocha with the exception of the central Ekue. Of course the motifs or figures of religious representation function in organizing the perceptions and thoughts of the religious subject, situating that subject in a readable world, at home in a signifying cosmos. Behind this process lies an unconscious awareness of an otherness that the ego must con trol in some fashion or another, a not-self that the ego must either master or resolve into sameness in order to find order outside itself. Locating this uni fying process in religious symbolization, Zuesse writes that "[o]nly a genu inely transcendental center organizes the preconscious disposition and sen sory symbols in a secure order." The center will hold: it makes things over into the signs of its system and gathers them into its fluid architecture. It is precisely religion, continues Zuesse, that "aligns the passions with the con sciously known structures of the universe" (Zuesse 176). The Spanish ex pression "Estoy en mi centro""I'm right where I belong"sums up the feeling of centering achieved through the use of religious symbolism. The forerunner of the phenomenology of religion, William James, de fined "mental field" as "the total mental state, the entire wave of conscious ness or field of objects present to the thought at any time." The field of con sciousness in this conception undergoes recentering shifts of mental energy that succeed one another in the course of an individuals life. Movable shift ing centers accordingly orient action like a compass in a magnetic field. The process of conversion can be explained as one that relocates the subject s "habitual centre" of "personal energy" whereby contents that were once pe ripheral, on the fringes or margins of the field, "now take a central place" (James 226, 227, 193). James's concept of centering within the mental field lends support to James Figarola's arguably "pluralistic" theory of the fundamento. James's limitation lies in his disregard of questions of language, rep resentation, and signification in general. In assuming the pure interiority of some prelinguistic mental activity, similar to the "authentic cogito" or "transcendental ego" of phenomenology, James, despite his dynamic view of consciousness, retains a metaphysical belief in the subject as origin of meaning and foundation of personal identity. A salutary alternative would be to see a centering active in the selection and repetition of figures that orga nize the systems of each religion; the fundamentos of each religion, we should stress, not only focus signification but ground a sense of selfhood as defined within the matrix of the religion's beliefs and practices. Transported to America, the slaves could carry with them nothing but

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IMikiiKeliiiiiiilirritift o 41 their languages, their beliefs, their gods, and their religions: the broken main stays of their identity, recreated in the face of an institution that destroyed their familial organization and the coherence of their belief systems (SMD 23). As the violence of the transplantation required that the shattered sys tems be recomposed and regenerated in Cuba and elsewhere, African-based religions accordingly reiterated the desire for reunion or for a return to the center identified with the "homeland." As belief systems incorporating ele ments of Hispanic Catholicism, Afro-Cuban religions can be said to preserve and enrich the image of Christianity that Kenneth Burke describes in The Rhetoric of Religion: "It is seen as a unifying principle, the vision of an original Edenic one-ness, with endless varieties of action and passion deriving from it some what as the many languages that came to beset the building of the Tower of Babel eventually followed expulsion from the Garden" (v).The study of reli gion is pluralistic, but the study of the religious system should account for its Utopian impulse for unification. Yet because Afro-American religious sys tems did not come across the Middle Passage whole and intactfamilies and worship communities were divided, officiants and devotees separated in the African diasporathose religions could be practiced only after being recom posed, restored unto themselves as religions, by devotees who reunited the remembered fragments of myth, doctrine, and ritual from their own tradition and from the traditions of other slaves from other parts of Africa. Paradoxically, then, the system of belief put in practice by a heterogeneous mass of slaves in a plantation area bound them "back" into a community that never was before, and it bound them "again" to an African center of myth and legend that did not previously exist. For the slaves, there is no pure and original religion, no simple "return to Africa." On this premise, the no tions concerning religious syncretizations, semiosis, and multiple represen tation that I have elaborated will come into play in the chapters that follow, which address each of the major religious traditions in various sociohistorical contexts. In order to contextualize a large corpus of Afro-Cuban literary texts, chap ter 2 provides an overview of Yoruba-Lucumi religious manifestations in Cuba. The mythical, ritual, doctrinal, social, and experiential dimensions of Regla de Ocha will be addressed as will Santeria's claim to a dominant status on the island. Chapter 3 develops more literary-interpretive readings of Afro-Cuban nar ratives appearing during and after the period of Machado's dictatorship in the 1930s, when Lucumi motifs were incorporated into works that sought

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42 o (kipttrOic to define a distinct national identity and a postcolonial culture. During the early Republican period, I argue, Afro-Cuban myth, doctrine, and ritual were called on to participate in the project of redefining and revitalizing a national culture, in part as a reaction to foreign cultural impositions. A brief history of cl afrocubanismo will present the contours of the new culture of nationalist resistance. The authors subsequently examined in this chapter will include Ale jo Carpentier, Jose Antonio Ramos, and Romulo Lachatafiere. Afro-Cuban religion especially enters into the nationalist allegory of Jose Antonio Ramos's Caniqui (1936), in which the runaway slave protagonist becomes a symbol of protest against neocolonialism. In that novel, Caniqui's African-based reli gious beliefs define his rebellious character and furthermore frame a critical interpretation of traditional Catholicism as a repressive religion in complic ity with colonial domination. Lachatafiere s primitivist narrative preserves a number of divination narratives, patakis, and folktales in a sequence that projects a primordial world of mythical gods for its readers. Chapter 4, "A Is For Abakua," reflects on the significance of the Abakua Secret Society or so-called Nanigos in the literature of the first half of this century. After summarizing its principal beliefs and rituals, which involve faith in the Lucumi orishas, I will turn to the "futurist" discourse of Abakua religion in Alejo Carpentier's ;Ecue-Yamba-0! The Nanigo stories of Gerardo delValle's l/4fambd (1938) evoke a world of secret rites, arcane myth, intergroup rivalries, and the kind of brutality that Ortiz described in his Hampa afrocubana.los negros brujos (Afro-Cuban underworld: the black sorcerers, 1917). In delValle's stories, group formation leads to intergroup aggression and vio lence. Although delValle's use of Abakua and Lucumi myth does not always square with versions provided by more ethnologically minded authorities, his inconsistencies and inaccuracies, I hope to show, help to underscore his apparent aim of demonstrating the atavistic nature of the Nanigo subculture in Republican Cuba. Chapter 5 shifts the focus to the Congo-Bantu heritage with its discussion of Palo Monte. Although this much discussed heritage relies on YorubaLucumi tradition for much of its structure, I argue that Palo Monte also af firms its own idiosyncratic significations in its recurrent metaphors of cen tering and circling, its magic inscriptions, its nganga charms, its repertoire of spells or bilongos, and its mythology of non-Yoruba gods and devils in the oral tradition of kutuguangos and in the literary tradition of Kongo-based folktales. Chapter 6, "Versions of Vaudou," examines the reasons why some AfroCubanist authors have turned to the Dahomey-Fon-Haitian tradition as a tex-

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IfrHiliihliiiiiiilirntiK o 4} tual source. Transported to Cuba through migrations of Haitians to Cuba at the end of the eighteenth century and, at several times, during the twentieth century, the magic, ritual, and myth of Vaudou, as will be seen, have supple mented the Afro-Cuban religious system and provided a counterexample of religion's role in Caribbean history and politics. A history of Vaudou and an overview of its myths, rituals, and metaphysics will precede readings of two Cuban narratives concerned with the Vaudou heritage, namely, Carpentier s El rcino de este mundo and Benitez Rojo s "La tierra y el cielo" (Earth and heaven, 1969). Chapter 7 examines the Afro-Cuban novel and short story in the context of the Cuban Revolution. In that narrative, the themes of social conscious ness and solidarity are juxtaposed with varied visions of Afro-Cuhan reli gion. In the first section of the chapter, an account of the Revolution's cul tural policy toward literature and Afro-Cuban religion will prepare for a reading of Guillermo Cabrera Infante's story, from Asi en la paz como en la guerra (In peace as in war, 1960), "En el gran ecbo" (In the great Ecbo), which, as will be shown, offers an ambiguous reading of Afro-Cuban religion but em ploys its motifs in a critique of bourgeois culture under Batista. Carpentier's la Consagracion de la Primavera (The rite of spring, 1978), representing AfroCuban religion in a more affirmative light, traces the alternative process by which Afro-Cuban myth and ritual, especially those of the Abakua Secret So ciety, become positively refigured as metaphors for political struggle and his torical destiny A subsequent reading of Manuel Cofifio's Cuando la sangre se pareceal fuego (When blood looks like fire, 1977) will explicate the manner in which a more exclusivist politics of culture became textualized in novels that, while respecting the beauty and complexity of Afro-Cuban religion, nonetheless justify the suppression of that religion in what the state deter mines to be the interest of the collectivity. In this case, fiction attempts to rechannel and thus manage the desires and energies awoken by Afro-Cuban religion. In so doing, it also explores the way that motifs of religion break out of the marginalized category to which the overt narrative would confine it and thus overturn the dominant message of the text. The next section of chapter 7 elaborates the thesis that a process of "folklorization"involving the containment, marginalization, and aesthetizing secularization of Afro-Cuban religion by the agencies of official cul turecan be traced in works of Afro-Cuban narrative by Cabrera, Miguel Barnet, Martinez Fure, and Dora Alonso. The final section examines texts that view the Afro-Cuban sign-world as a compilation of "local narrative" avail able for redefiningand de-definingthe Cuban national identity. Sarduy's

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44 o (bipttrlie De donde son los cantantcs (Where the singers are from, 1967) is read as a post modern ludic attempt to reincorporate a decomposed Afro-Cuban religion into a dynamic, nonessentialist definition of Cuban national identity. That attempt, I argue, ignores the official categories of "inside" or "outside" the Revolution in the name of affirming the freeplay of signification inherent in Afro-Cuban mythopoetics. On the other hand, a reading of Hernandez Espinosas drama Maria Antonia (1979) unravels a text in which divination, possession, dance, sacrifice, and conjuration function in producing a sign-world that gives coherence to experience, restoring a sense of how Afro-Cuban religion constitutes the mysterious unity in which a multitude consisting of the heterogeneous artifacts of various literatures and cultures presents itself.

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1 The LiHumi Sifli Srstea The gods art naturally fond of expressing themselves in proverbs and metaphors. Lydia Cabrera, "Introduccion," Refranes de NegrosViejos In The Rhetoric of Religion, Kenneth Burke proposes a theory of words about wordsthat is, a "logology"that identifies three classes or empirical or ders of language. These classes include words referring to nature, words re ferring to the sociopolitical realm, and words referring to other words. These empirical terms serve as analogies constituting an additional fourth order, one in which those terms can name the supernatural. Elaborating a Platonist, upward/downward dialectic in his own rhetoric-based theory, Burke finds that the supernatural order, as it relies on the empirical orders to provide it with recognizable signs, recurs back upon those empirical signs to condition or modify them according to its transcendent perspective. Such is the case, to cite Burke's premier example, when "supernatural personality" is said ei ther to exist prior to the empirical personality or to contain its center or core; such is the case, more generally, when the transcendent realm becomes the "ground" or essence of the other three terms (RR 14-15, 36). This dialectic of terms can be observed in the genesis of Afro-Cuban reli gious signs. All are founded on the orders of natural things, sociopolitical entities, and other signs (including words, to semiotize Burke's schema a bit). And the transcendent order symbolized by empirically based metaphors turns back to invest those metaphors with a meaning founded on metaphysi cal grounds so constituted. Divine signification and exegesis both operate on the assumption of these translations between orders of terms. The Lucumi system, on which Regla de Ocha or Santeria is based, centers representation on the orishas or on their concrete signifiers: on the one hand, iconic images and identifying objects called atributos and secretos (attributes and secrets) function as their metaphors and metonymies. Gonzalez-Wippler

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U o Chapter Two appropriately calls Santeria "a system that seeks to find the divine in the most common, ordinary things" (SR 23). That is to say, the religion identifies a divinity in natural and artificial objects. In the mode of iconic representa tion, on the other hand, correspondences or parallelisms between saints and orishas signal an identity with a difference; an equivalence but not an equal ity. Given their difference, the match between saint and orisha within Regla de Ocha constitutes an originary displacement of meaning. Mostly of Yoruba origin, the orishas furthermore model the personality of the omo-orisha or "child of the orisha," most visibly in the ritual of possession, as they per sonify the divine forces of nature. The orishas thus perform multiple symbolic functions in providing a fo cus to the cult. According to Gonzalez-Wippler, "The orishas are the very soul of Santeria. The central aim of the santero is to worship the saints, to observe their feasts, obey their commands, and conduct their rituals" (SE ix).The orishas are archetypes, primordial beings, magical agents, the re ceivers of prayer and sacrifice. Syncretized with the santos catolicos, they ac quire qualities consonant with William James's characterization of saints as "authors, auctores, increasers, of goodness," those whose symbolic presence actualizes the potential and "essential sacredness of everyone" (James 350). Murphy uses a dramatistic metaphor in saying that in the relation between believer and orisha, "The world is revealed as a theater for the interaction of invisible powers, and the orisha within is an infallible guide to worldly suc cess and heavenly wisdom" (SAS 143). The interdependence and intimacy between humans and gods forms the axis of worship in Regla de Ocha, whose name translates as "religion," "or der," "law," or even "rule" of the orisha (ocha). As the deities of what began in the Americas as a "slave religion," the Afro-Cuban saints have played a central role in the evolution of a unique Creole culture and an Afro-Cuban identity through the process of transculturation. In the theater of the world, the orisha acts in a variety of archetypal dra mas in which he or she displays diverse personalities. As mentioned earlier, these sometimes contradictory personalities or avatars are called caminos, "paths" or "roads," suggesting the manner in which the orisha s identity may shift completely with each distinct manifestation. Saldana defines the avatar as "one of the moments in the life or in the trajectory of an orisha. It could be defined," she adds, "as an aspect of the 'theopsychical' personality of the deity, like a fact [or action, event, hecho] or an anecdote" (122). Eleggua and Oggun, two eminent and popular orishas, have about twenty caminos

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TktlKiiiSinSptM o 47 4. RitMi settiH i anritates tf MMliimiutHt Rcili. each. And to each camino corresponds a number of mythical narratives fea turing the orisha as protagonist. Some individual orishas will have different genders in male or female caminos, as is the case forYemaya and Obatala.Yet all the avatars of the orisha contribute to making up one multifaceted mythi cal character associated with the aforementioned set of identifying objects or themes. These objects and themes considered collectively are called the "uni verse" of an orisha; the universe of Babalu-Aye, for instance, is that of skin diseases, wounds, and pustules, and includes miniature representations of crutches and other things that signal his syncretization with San lizaro. Identified with the orishas, the objects called atributos function as me tonymies of the orishas themselves within each orishas universe, inasmuch as the object is invested with significance by an equivalence drawn between the thing and the deity to which it is adjoined. To prepare to invoke the

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41 o (kipterlvf orisha, it is necessary to gather together the particular attributes of the deity into the ritual asiento or setting that will be placed on the worshipper s altar. The dialectical principle works here again as we go from orisha to attribute and back again to the transcendental referent. A series of equivalencies will illustrate the Burkean analogy between natural phenomenon and divinity: Chango is the thunder (and the thunder is Chango). The wind is Oya. Ifa (the divination system) is Orumila. Eleggua is the mound of earth, cement, blood, and cowrie shells that stands watch behind the front door of the house. The orishas, by these correspondences, double as anthropomorphic symbols of natural forces as they objectify human character types or obsessions. Gonzalez-Wippler is correct in defining Santeria as "an earth religion" in the sense that "nature is a manifestation of God's will" (SE 199, 201). Ritual operations with the attributes call the orishas into presence or rep resent the orishas in devotion. As stated in chapter 1, the foremost represen tation of those deities are the otanes or stones sacred to a particular orisha. These stones are the fundamento, the fundament that centers signification, comparable to the Ekue drum in the Regla Abakua and the nganga-cauldron in Palo Monte. In Regla de Ocha, the sacred stones are ritually placed in a soup tureen, the sopera, then fed with sacrificial blood and washed with omiero, a sacred mixture of herbs and liquids, then bathed in palm oil, so that in and through the otanes the orisha can drink up nourishment in the form of ache (PQ 253). As transmitters of ache, the sacred stones call to the gods, inviting them to come down and take possession of their omos, to give the sign that they accept the sacrifice and feel strengthened by it. Into the sopera or tureen of each orisha also goes, alongside the otanes, the orisha s personal set of cowries for the diloggun divination, a ritual I will explain in detail toward the end of this chapter. The practitioner uses each set of cowries for communicating with the orisha in question, with the excep tion of the shells assigned to the individual's tutelary or protecting orisha, which another believer may throw and read on that individual's behalf (SR 21). Other signs invested with sacred significance enter into ritual. A color code comes into play in the beadwork, flags, and dress of believers: red and white for Chango, green and black for Eleggua, yellow for Ochun, white for Obatala, blue for Yemaya (see Argiielles Micet). Specific numbers belong to an orisha. Favorite foods, dance patterns, herbs, plants, and fruits also iden tify the orisha in question. The manner of placing attributes in the ritual canastillcro or storage cabinets symbolizes the hierarchy of orishas, with Obatala, venerable god of wisdom and tranquillity, often occupying the top

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TkelMinffiflSfStti o 4! shelf (SAS 60).The ritual asientos may also include effigies, soil, metal sculptures, roots, sticks, and bones (RA 121). Flowers, too, correspond to the orisha who owns and favors them, and the orisha's preference tends to match the color of the favored flower. The lyrics of Jully Mendoza's "Flores para tu altar" (Flowers for your altar), recorded by Celina and Reutilio, name the flowers and the orishas that claim them: the yellow sunflower, girasol, for Ochiin; the rosa nacarada for Obatala; the white gladiolas for Babahi-Aye. The principe de pura sangre, "pure-blood prince," belongs to Chango, Yemaya, and the rest of the most popular orishas (EQT 24, 58). Once natural, cultural, and "metalinguistic" terms have been directed "upward" to signify the holy, the holy word may then, as the foregoing nature-divinity equivalences have suggested, be turned "downward" to iden tify qualities in the "lower" sociopolitical order. Miguel Barnet in la fucnte viva (The living fountain, 1983) acknowledges the naturalness with which Cu bans accept mythicopolitical identifications, such that the creator-deity Oddudua has symbolized not only life and death but also government, bu reaucratic organization, the Revolution, and Fidel Castro himself (157-58). Some expatriate believers have reported that Castro performed devotions to the warrior Eleggua when he lived and trained in the manigua or jungle of the Sierra Maestra. El Comandante himself supposedly wears two watches to hide his initiation bracelet, and he gains power and protection by bathing in a tub full of sacrificial blood. Batista before him was rumored to believe in Santeria, and "allegedly owed his miraculous escape from Havana to the protection of the orishas." Finally, "[l]ike many other Latin-American musicians," to give another example, "Tito Puente is an initiated santero" (SE 108, 114). Filtering down into popular myth and imagination, Santeria signs con tinue to contribute their combination of elements drawn from a variety of preexisting African religions and the kind of baroque Catholicism practiced by the Spanish colonizers. Cros Sandoval attributes the predominance of Yoruba-Lucumi elements in Santeria not only to the fact that the majority of Africans brought as slaves to Cuba were Yoruba but to "the greater organiza tion and structuralization of their religion" (TOM 2). In an influential article published in 1938, Romulo Lachatafiere previously accounted for the family resemblances among Afro-Cuban religious systems by claiming the tendency of non-Yoruba groups, such as the Congo-Bantu, to adapt their beliefs to the Yoruba system. The famed Afro-Cuban scholar judged that the Yoruba ele ment in the Afro-Cuban cultural amalgam set the norm and operated as a catalyst for the transmission and adaptation of African religion in Cuba, es-

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N o (liptcrlw pecially in the western part of the island where the Yoruba-Lucumi were gathered in the greatest numbers (SRL 42-3). The dominant Yoruba-Lucumi cults have provided an analytical framework for Afro-Cuban religion in gen eral, in the view of Lachatanere and other investigators, who thus, perhaps prematurely, oversimplified the task of analyzing the heterogeneous phenom ena known together as "Afro-Cuban" religion, as the following excerpt from Lachatanere s article suggests. According to Lachatanere, If we examine the Bantu traits, for example, and with regard to the identi ties between the saints of the Catholic pantheon and the deities of African origin, we will be able to see that the latter evolve toward the original deity utilizing theYoruba characteristic as the norm. In this way, it seems that such Bantu beliefs have had need ofYoruba mythology and its other religious essences in order to match the Catholic saint and the deity. . [T]he sum total of all the cults shows a major percentage of Yoruba influ ence, [and] one could judge that in the Afro-Cuban Religious System there has existed the tendency among the varied African cultures to nucleate their religious elements in accord with the Yoruba pattern. (Quoted in Cuervo Hewitt, APA 16) The systemic, integrative aspect of Lucumi religion and the availability of its orishas as models for refashioning deities from other traditions indeed made it available to serve as an infrastructure for evolving syncretic religions. Yet the Yorubo-centric bias of Lachatanere s hypothesis runs the risk of over looking the specific characteristics of other classes of religious phenomena, such as those belonging to Congo, Calabar, and Ewe-Fon cultures. The thesis of the Yoruba predominance and the visibility and preeminence of its reli gious pantheon among Afro-Cuban subcultures indicates a synecdochic treat ment of Lucumi religion as representative of Afro-Cuban religion in general. Given the prevalence of transculturations, that treatment in effect overlooks the free play and transfer of signs across the borders between religious sys tems whose elements would supplement the Lucumi system. Because Santeria is already heterogeneous in its composition and dynamic in its adaptation to a new settings, "it is always open to new reinterpretations and innovations" (TOM 2). Other corpi of belief and practice, including complementary or competing pantheons, were always at hand to provide supplements of "foreign" mythemes, figures, and motifs to the syncretizing process, as an over view of Yoruba-Lucumi history should make clear.

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The liMMi Sit System o H Historical Bachareunds TheYoruba of the Guinea Coast do not comprise a single "tribe" but rather consist of numerous and varied tribal groups only loosely unified by com mon language, mythology, history, dress, and ritual symbolism.' The name Yoruba serves to distinguish the OyoYoruba as the "Yoruba proper"; the Fulani or Hausa gave that name to the inhabitants of the Oyo kingdom, and it also served to differentiate Yoruba-speaking peoples from other ethnias such as the Hausa, Nupe, orTiv (YSN 5; Eades 4). Internecine warfare, migration, and external conquest fragmented the region and did their part in creating what Lloyd calls "a kaleidoscopic pattern of culture" and in "differentiating throughout what appears only superficially as a political unity" (55 l).That these more than fifty subtribes or subgroups did not share a common sense of identity, however, is confirmed by the fact of their various alliances with non-Yoruba peoples for warfare with other Yoruba subgroups. The Yoruba subgroups, all told, occupied a land of forests and savannas extending from the Gulf of Guinea in the south to the lower Niger River. These kingdoms included Ijebu, Oyo, Ijesha, and the holy city of Ife, among others. The most important subtribes are the Oyo, of the northwest, and the Nagos, or Lucumi proper, in the west (YO 20n. 11).TheYoruba living in southwest Nigeria, the region of highest concentration, and in the area of the so-called Slave Coast included the Ekiti and the Fee as well. From the westernmost part of Yorubaland came the Sabalu, the Agicon, and the Cuevano (RA 20). Yoruba also inhabit a part of eastern Dahomey, and they also live in Benin, Ghana, and Togo. The provinces of Ibadan, Abeokuta, Colony, and Ondo occupy the western part of Yorubaland and Kabba and Ilorin the northern part. Predominantly agrarian before colonization, the Yoruba were nonetheless by tradition "the most urban of all African people," their concentration in towns and cities "dating back well before the period of European penetra tion" (YSN 3).Three factors allowed the development ofYoruba kingdoms in the Guinea forests. The first factor was the development of a kind of sustain ing cultivation whose produce would come to include yams, plantain, ba nana, maize, cassava, kola trees, and oil palms. Second, Yoruba subgroups found support in commercial relations with European traders on the coast and with central and east Africans, especially those from Sudan. The develop ment of markets and export trade encouraged the growth of handicrafts and plastic arts, in which Yoruba artisans and artists would excel. Third, cultural influences from western Sudan and possibly from as far away as the Nile

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SI o ChtpterTwe Valley through Meroe may have transmitted knowledge of such arts as iron working to the Yoruba, although the veracity of this influence and its extent are still disputed (Smith 5-9). The origin of the Yoruba is said to be the sacred city of Ile-Ife, and as the focus of the Yoruba "reference myth" it provides a charter for their culture, a basis for self-identification, and a validation for other Yoruba myths, orisha names, taboos, and ritual. As Robert Smith asserts, "the primacy of Ife in the life of the Yorubatheir religion, their political system, their cultureis unlikely ever to be contested" (35). In archaeology, it was Leo Frobenius who first called attention to the art of ancient Ife. While researching the sa cred groves of Ife in 1910 and 1911, Frobenius came upon a now famous bronze head of Olokun, as well as a number of terra-cotta heads and stone monuments. Yoruba art drew further international attention with the discov ery in 1919 of a bronze Obalufon mask (representing the third or fourth Oni, or king, of Ife) and a terra-cotta head representing the would-be usurper Lajuwa.The seventeen bronze heads discovered in the Wunmonije compound in 19389 represent what is perhaps the most "spectacular" find, accord ing to Smith (27). In cosmogonic myth, as I will discuss later, not only are the Yoruba as a people said to have originated in Ile-Ife, but the earth and the human race began there as well. The Yoruba peoples were once a nomadic tribal group, but settled in the southwest portion of what is today Nigeria in the early 1700s. It is then that the old Oni of Oyo named Katunga consolidated his subjects into a powerful and industrious nation. Katunga's successor, Ajagbo, divided the nation into four parts: the Yoruba, the Egba, the Ketu, and the Ijebu. From that time onward, all the Oba ruling Ile-Ife have claimed their descent from the found ing father (Idowu 14, 22-23). The traditional Yoruba political order indeed mirrors the cosmic hierarchy: Ijimere in the didascalia of The Imprisonment of Obatala describes the Supreme Sky God Olodumare as seated upon a throne in the fashion of an Oba. Olodumare wears the appropriate beaded crown and veil of beads, all in white; he carries the add, the ceremonial sword that is "symbol of the power over life and death" (47).The leader Ajagbo was succeeded by Abiodun and Abiodun by Arongangan in 1800, under whom the Yoruba empire began to disintegrate due to the pressures of intertribal warfare. The Vaiz nation was largely responsible for delivering the Yoruba to the slave trad ers who transported them to the Americas (ES 15). The descendants of the Yoruba in Cuba are often called Lucumi, their lan guage Anago. References to the tribe of the Ulkumi date back as early as 1728,

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Tfae IBCIBI Sifi Smen o B and some say the name became corrupted as lucumi and generalized to de nominate allYoruba slaves brought to the island (OC 21). Others say that lucumi is an altered form of akumi, which referred to the Aku region of Nigeria from which many of theYoruba were taken into slavery. The name is also said to originate in oluku mi, Yoruba for "my friend." Yoruba-based religion thus became the Regla Lucumi (SAS 27). Anago or Nago is the name for the Ifonyin subgroup that was generalized by the Dahomeyans to refer to all Yorubaspeaking peoples and by Cubans and Brazilians as a synonym for Yoruba or Lucumi (YSN 5).Today, the more than ten million inhabitants of Yorubaland approximate the total population of Cuba. (That of Nigeria is over 65 mil lion.) As in the derived Lucumi culture, religion plays a central function in Yoruba life. Each Nigerian town typically has its personal deity: in Abeokuta, it is Yemaya; in Oshogbo, Oshun. Shango comes from Oyo; Obatala and Ogun from Ife, and Eleggua from Ketu. In Lloyd's account, the worshippers of a particular orisa in a representative Yoruba village, Ado, belong to the same lineage and live together. The myths of their founder will provide the charter defining the position of the lineage and its food taboos (560-61).This ex clusive worship helps to explain the high number of orishas in Yorubaland since each town has its local deity. Fewer orishas came to be worshipped in Cuba, it will be recalled, because there the orishas were worshipped together in private practice or in the cabildos (TO 14). In Cuba and Brazil, the relocation of those from Oyo and Ketu led to an American resurgence of the cults of Obatala, Eshii, Ifa, Osanyin, and Oggun and to a revitalized worship of such river goddesses as YemonjarechristenedYemaya in Cuba and Xemanja in Braziland Oshun, the Cuban Ochiin. Murphy's ethnohistory of Santeria emphasizes that it was the nature of the Catholic church in Cuba, mediated by the cabildos, that allowed both the flourishing of a "mosaic syncretism right beneath its ecclesiastical noses" and the refunctioning of the church's signs into the service to the orishas. Catholicism in Murphy's view was open to reverse co-optation by Lucumi culture because it valorized ritual and iconology, in contrast, say, to the in ward-directed, anti-iconological denominations of Protestantism. Catholi cism's distant and impersonal God furthermore bore a resemblance to the Supreme God Olodumare and also had need of intermediaries who would act on His behalf: divine power was invested in the corporate body of saints, Virgins, angels, and even in the personnel of the religion, with its priests, bishops, cardinals, and infallible Pope. And the Catholic notions of ritual and

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14 o (iipterlwi self-abnegation dovetailed quite well with the santero's beliefs and practices surrounding the Lucumi rituals of purification. Like Catholic ritual, Lucumi ritual is sacramental, communal, and mystical (SAS 114). Whereas in Africa, orisha-worship tended to be directed by the impera tives of lineage in social groups devoted to a single deity, in Latin America the violence of slavery disrupted the ties of kinship and generational continuity, preventing the formation of groups overtly devoted to the worship of orishas (APA 42). Back in Africa, the forced relocation of entire villages also caused the exclusive worship of particular orishas to die out. The cult of Ochosi underwent this complete deracination and transplantation (SR 15). Yet Yoruba-based religion in Cuba succeeded in building ties of solidarity and communication that the dispersive violence of slavery otherwise denied the slaves. For the syncretism of Lucumi religion in Cuba produced not only the conjoining of orisha with saint but also the gathering of the orishas and saints into a single practice of worship (SAS 113). The Cuban equivalents of the Yoruba lineage-based shire would then reappear in the Afro-Cuban reli gious associationscofradias, potcncias, or agrupacionesof the Regla de Ocha. Members in the cofradias, or religious brotherhoods, attended the same church and often hailed from the same geographical origin (or nation). True to the Spanish tradition, the cofradias sponsored or participated in car nivals and parades. The popular character of Afro-Cuban worship combined with the democratizing tendency of worshipping all the important orishas together has allowed diverse elements of the Lucumi religious system to trickle down into popular speech and culture in the form of folktales, proverbs, exologisms, dance, music, painting, beadwork, and other kinds of ar tistic expression. This religion was a indeed a "popular" religionof and by a peopleand yet, to be a religion at all, it had to reserve for itself at the same time its own sacred space of ritual drama and representations, removed in principle from the profane and empirical orders. The Order of Mysteries After entering the "Lucumi home" you may see an altar in one of the rooms. The altar is covered with a mantle on which wooden or plaster-cast figures of saints and virgins are set, alongside candles, plates of food, bells to call the spirits, cigars, and other offerings. On the walls of the altar room are usually hung lithographs of the saints. This altar is also called a boveda espiritualliter ally a spiritual "vault," even "burial chamber" or "crypt"before which the misa espiritual, the spiritual mass for the dead and the orishas, is celebrated (MS 15, 42; CA 3:201-2).

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TicbciiififiSptei o J$ In Cuba (and in Miami too), the Santeria temple is the ile ocha or casa dc santos"house of the orishas"usually the house of the santero or santera, priest or priestess of the rehgion. Three spaces of worship are kept within the ile ocha. In the igbodu or inner sanctum, the more esoteric rites of the cult, such as initiations, are cajried out. The tya arank, which is often the living room of the house, is reserved for semiprivate meetings of the devotees. Public ceremonies are held in the iban balo, which is often the patio (TOM 3). Once inside the home or temple, you may see, hanging from a rafter, the feathered birdlike amulet called the niche osain, constructed with the requisite prayer and ritual, possibly containing a turtle's head, pieces of turtle shell, wine, and needles from the zarza bush.These ingredients are dried and crushed before they are placed into their little gourd container, into which are in serted the tips of buzzard feathers. Strings are attached to the osain, and it is then ready to hang in its position of flight from beam or ceiling. From there it brings protection and security to the household (MS 71). On a high sur face or shelf set into the corner stands a silvery bell-ringed cup, topped with the figure of a rooster: it is the osun, which symbolizes the life of its owner. If that cup should fall, it forbodes imminent disaster (FS 48). The community that congregates in the ile ocha includes fellow initiates, the spiritual guides known as iyalorishas or babalorishas (santeras and santeros), those of the diviner caste known as babalaos, and the anthropomorphic orishas themselves (SDM 79-80). Following its precedent in the cabildos of the colony, the worship community of Santeria makes the religion "a cultural and social support system" (Castellanos, "Commentary" 224). As will be seen later, that support system creates its own spiritual and social world through the inculcation and practice of its symbol systems. Lachatafiere once judged that the santero is neither mystic nor charlatan but "a realistic character with active participation in the life of the commu nity," one who "performs according to the economic uncertainty in which the community lives" (MS 50). Responding to the real problems of the com munity, the santero is priest, diviner, and healer of the cult. He officiates in the ceremonies of initiation, cleansing, propitiation, and burial; he reads the life condition of the client and the course that his or her future will or should take; he prescribes or obtains the herbs, plants, and other medicines of the manigua or "wild" parts of the city and knows how to apply them for a cure (see Lewis 193). Despite the leadership provided by its santeros, no central authority rules over the Regla de Ocha; as one informant told Cabrera, "We have no Pope!" (YO 130).Yet an authority invested in the religious personnel does regu-

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K o ChipterTwo late and order the life of the community. Santeros and babalaos enjoy a high degree of autonomy in interpreting doctrine and guiding practice, and this free individualism does in effect decenter religious practice (RA 48). Mem bers of the society or the particular ile ocha group will nonetheless recog nize a ranking of members according to the degree of their knowledge and their progress through the scale of rituals through which they pass. Julio Sanchez's study of the Afro-Caribbean orisha tradition presents the hierar chical model of the group based on the image of a pyramid. On this pyra mid, each ranking of humans is based according to a corresponding ritual stage in the process of acquiring and mastering the arcana of the religion. The model, explains Sanchez, appropriately represents the largest group, that of the nonbelievers, at the lowest of the eleven levels, the pyramid s base. Those possessed of the maximum degree of knowledge and occupying the top of the pyramid are the omokoloba, those of "long experience and prestige" who have been consecrated in Ifa divination and have received the Supreme God Olofi (30). This Lucumi hierarchy of course remits to the authority of the orishas, who together form the transcendental center of the Lucumi sign system. "SuncreiMriiiti" In the Yoruba language, the word orisha was not originally synonymous with the word for deity (ebura) but referred to the more than fifty gods subordi nate to the God of Whiteness, Orisanla (Obatala). The word orisha, GonzalezWippler proposes, may be traced back to the root ri, meaning "to see" and sha, "to choose." Or, alternatively, to asha, "religious ceremony" (SE 2). The total number of orishas depends on the informant. One Ifa verse collected by Bascom in Nigeria refers to the four hundred deities on the right and the two hundred on the left. Garcia Cortez reports that as few as 201 to as many as 600 have been counted (ID 103-4; P 35). In Cuba, the orishas are worshipped not only in the Lucumi cult, but also in the Abakua Society, and conjointly with other, sometimes "overlapping" deities in Regla Arara and Palo Monte. At the heart of Regla de Ocha, the narratives in which the orishas appear as characters form the foundation for beliefs and practices of that religion. It is important to keep in mind that all orishas, in all their incarnations, monistically partake of the divine substance, which is immanent in the very elements of nature: "As Oggiin is the hard strength of iron, Ochun is the yielding force of water. Each is a different refraction of Olodumare's ache" (SAS 12).

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The licini Sin Sfsten 5? Whatever their ontological status, the orishas are indeed integral to the Cuban imaginary, manifesting the existence of a sort of social or collective unconscious. The following section is intended to serve as an introduction to the nature and character of the orishas, whose pantheon forms the focus of worship in the Yoruba-Lucumi religious traditions. A few explanatory notes will precede a series of orisha profiles. In Cuba, one begins to worship all the orishas by first approaching the Santos dc Fundamcnto or Santos dc Entrada, "Saints of Foundation" or "Saints of Entrance": Obatala, Chango, Yemaya, and Ochun. Of these santos, the orishas Chango, Ochun, and Yemaya enjoy the greatest popularity among Cubans and for that reason are fondly known as los Ninos dc k Simpatia, The Children of Sympathy (MS 29). The orishas collectively known as "las Siete Potencias Africanas"the Seven African Powersare Obatala, Eleggua, Yemaya, Ochun, Chango, Oya, and Oggun (Canizares 49). Certain alterations occurred in the names and identities of the orishas as they survived the Middle Passage from Africa to Cuba. In a perceptive study that compares the West African and Cuban pantheons, Cros Sandoval explains that since the artificially formed communities of slaves in Cuba tended to worship all the orishas rather than those of a single family lineage (as noted earlier), the number of orishas declined, from hundreds to around twenty With this reduction, the more widely known divinities lived on in Cuba, with many of the lesser deities being assimilated into the major ones, the former sometimes becoming caminos of the latter. Such is the case with Obatala, who absorbed both Obalufon, ancient god of peace and giver of language, and Nana Burukii, the Dahomeyan creation goddess. The local Yoruba gods of rivers, trees, or hills simply did not survive the passage. Due to separation and dispersion of families, neither did the Egungun cult of the ancestors cross intact (RA 122-24). In Cuba, furthermore, the Yoruba Shango merged with the Kongo Kanbaranguanje, just as he had beforehand among the Yoruba with the god Jakuta (APA 40). To the believer's mind, this merging of gods, added to their syncretization with Catholic saints, presents no distortion of their "true" iden tities but rather successive variations on the same theme of the caminos, paths, or avatars that the orisha takes up in certain life stages or incarnations. The manner of syncretization may display this successive character even after the orisha s arrival in the Americas. In Brazil, for instance, Chango or Xango is not Santa Barbara but San Miguel; Oggun or Ogum is not San Pedro but rather San Jorge (S 134). The syncretization of orishas with Catholic saints in Cuba effected a trans-

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H o CktptcrTvt mutation in their personalities as well. It has been noted that the vengeful Babahi-Aye took on the humility and mercy characteristic of San Lazaro. Oshun, like her sisters Oya and Oba, owned and inhabited a particular river while in Nigeria, but in Cuba she became the orisha of aU fresh waters. Yemaya underwent a similar process in becoming the goddess of the sea or salt waters. Certain of Oya s qualities were amplified in Cuba, so that she became the goddess and personification of wind, lightning, and the cemetery; Obba's fluvial association was neutralized in favor of her paragonization as the loyal, self-sacrificing wife (RA 124).The Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, Ochun, became Cuba's patron saint by decree on May 10, 1916, under Pope Benedict XV. She is celebrated on her feast day, September 8, in Santiago de Cuba (YO 56-57; CA 3:50). Not only did syncretization produce alterations in the identities of indi vidual orishas but it strengthened relations among them to the extent that they came to be regarded as belonging to one family. Chango, for example, became brother to Onimila, Oggun, and Babalu-Aye; adoptive son to Yemaya; godson to Osain. A redistribution of roles also took place between the mem bers of the extended family. In Cuba, Eleggua sometimes assumes Oggun s role of cutting roads through the forest, and Ochun, instead of Aye Shaluga, becomes the goddess who owns and loves money (RA 125-26; compare Canizares45). The series of profiles that follows may serve as a useful vade mecum for quick identifications. Bear in mind that the same profiles will tend to gloss over the numerous caminos or avatars of the orishas, their varying relations with one another, the complexities of their attributes, and the catalogs of their associated herbs and plants. These identifications include only the dei ties that figure in the works examined in this study and will be discussed in greater detail as appropriate in explications of specific texts. For a more com plete account, see Cabrera s El monte, Bolivar Arosteguis Los orishas en Cuba, and Cros Sandoval's la religion afrocubanaall principal sources of the following discussion. First among gods, Olorun-Olodumare is the "Great Benefactor," the "Creator." Olorun means "Owner of the Heavens." Olodumare is composed of ol, meaning "owner of," and either odu, great, or odu, meaning "he who carries the scep ter"; mare means immutable, unchanging. In this aspect the Supreme God is regarded as the creator of the universe. One of Olodumare's names, Oba Airi, means "the invisible king who sees and judges all things, is everywhere, but can be seen by no one." He is a wise judge when he has to be: he knows all

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Tbe iBcenf SifB Sfstea o 5) things and all thoughts and often settles disputes among the subordinate orishas. Omnipotent and eternal, Olodumare on one occasion put down a revolt of the gods by stopping the universe altogether, not setting it back into motion until the defeated divinities agreed to recognize the authority of the Almighty Another common name of the Supreme Being is Olofi or Olofin, "the supreme sovereign." As befitting his name, Olodumare governs all that goes on in the natural world, and he dwells immanently in all creation and in all creatures. The orishas are but emanations of Olodumare s ache (RA 102-7; SAS 7-8). Garcia Cortez, a Cuban babalocha who researched his book Pataki in Nige ria, also finds a pantheistic principle in Olodumare: "'The Maintainer of Har mony* maintains the harmony between all living things, not only the already animate, but also the so-called inanimate, for all is a part of the great energy that makes up the universe, for them nothing is dead, death, as such, does not exist. ... In the rivers, in trees, in rocks, in the seas, in the earth; in everything that surrounds us vibrates the spirit of God" (36). To say it in another way, all creation signifies Olodumare, the transcendental center of centers removed from the "system" of divinities. Often considered too re mote and indifferent to concern himself with human affairs, he is invoked but usually not worshipped directly. The Supreme God nonetheless has his own triplicate form, taking on three aspects that correspond to his three names and liken him somewhat to the tripartite Christian God. Olorun is the creator and origin of being; Olodumare seems to represent a more with drawn will; Olofi, often presented as a character in legend and pataki, per sonifies of the divine essence in the actively intervening will or law, and many of those narratives depict him as taking an active part in earthly dramas (SR 24). He is called Padre or Babd in Cuba. The Anago saying Kosi oba kan afi Olorum applies to him: "There is no god but Olorum." Olorum or Olorun, Olodumare, Olofi is the only oneyet his energy, grace, personality, and ache flow out into all beings (SAS 8). According to Cros Sandoval, the abstractness and aloofness of Olodumare, the lack of any cult or priesthood dedicated to the Supreme Being, and the greater accessibility of the orishas all contributed to weakening Olodumare s presence in the New World. The sovereign deity has become more human, shrinking in stature and tending to appear as a tired, gray old man who often finds himself entangled in situations in which he requires assistance from lesser deities. Because Olodumare distributed his ache among all the subor dinate deities, his power diminished among the Afro-Cuban believers, who

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M o (ImttrlW! at any rate could more readily communicate with the orishas (RA 108, 111). The orishas embody the force of this Lucumi equivalent of God the Father. Yet they are different from the Father. The name of Obatala means "King of the White Cloth," and he is the digni fied, pure, and just god sent down by Olodumare in the beginning to create the dry land of the earth and to mold the human race out of clay. This pri mordial Obatala is Olofi s son, named Orichanla or Obatala Alafunfun. Owner of the head (ori) where spirit dwells, he also owns thought and dreams. His attribute is the white irukc, the horsetail switch symbolic of royalty. Obatala is danced either as a tired old man or as a vigorous young warrior, depending on his camino. He is syncretized with the Virgen de las Mercedes. The origin of human speech is attributed to a very old Obatala and one of the avatars of Orichanla, the aforementioned Obalufon, "he who gave man the word" (YO 142, 113). In another version of this genesis, Olofi created the first orisha and named him Obatala. It was Obatala who created human bodies out of clay but Olofi who breathed life into that clay (CA 3:26). We will return to Orichanla momentarily. Oddudua is an androgynous god, lord of the underworld who owns soli tude and the secrets of death, sometimes appearing as the husband of a fe male Obatala and sometimes receiving credit for creating human beings. Jetstone and mother-of-pearl are among Oddudua s attributes; his colors are white, red, and black. In the Catholic Church, Oddudua syncretizes with San Manuel or the Holy Sacrament. All the Yoruba peoples descended from him or her, according to one popular belief (Lloyd 567). Other versions present Oddudua as the female consort of Obatala. As the first man and the first woman created by Olofi, they are the equivalents of Adam and Eve. Oddudua gave birth to Aganyu and Yemaya, and the latter, violated by her son, gave birth to the fourteen orishas: Chango, Obba, Ochun, Dada, Olokun, Olosa, Ochosi, Orun, Oggiin, Chankpana, Oko, Oke, Oya, and Aye-Shaluga (CA 3:28, 54; Canet 29). The myth of Obatala as Orishanla tells a different story of the origins of the orishas, a genesis in conflict and death. Orishanla had "a faithful slave, who cooked his food and looked after him in every way." One day the slave de cided to revolt and set an ambuscade for his master in the form of a huge boulder that rolled over and smashed the god. "Orisha was crushed into hundreds of pieces and they were scattered throughout the world." Orumila goes about the world picking up pieces of the original orisha, putting the fragments he finds into a calabash he calls Orisha Nla and installing the cala bash in a shrine in the first city, Ile-Ife.The myth concludes: "But hundreds

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IbdKiiiSijiSWi o (I of fragments are still scattered throughout the world today. And this is why Orishanla (i.e., the big orisha) is the most important and senior of them all." All "401" original deities owe their being to the same pulverized and scat tered archdeity, and the same goes for all the humans, animals, and other creatures: all manifest a bit of this "scattered divinity" in their own being. This genetic myth also explains and facilitates the susceptibility of human believers to "ownership" and "possession" by a particular orisha (YM 6-7, 62-63). The messenger of the gods, the orisha of thresholds and crossroads, is Eleggud, the powerful deity who, after the dead, must be propitiated at the beginning of every ceremony before the ceremony may proceed. The initial greeting and offering made to him at that point constitute small bribes to keep the trickster god from sabotaging the work of the sacrifice. Owner of the "keys of destiny," Eleggua is the one who opens doors and roadways to those who earn his favor (Canizares 48). From the Dahomeyan Elegbara comes Eshii, the originally syncretic incarnation of the Eleggua who, for many in Cuba, doubles the Christian Devil himself. One honors Eleggua first among the orishas by pouring out three spills of water before his image or by spray ing out a mouthful of rum spiced with chewed black peppercorns, once tribute has been made to the cgungun or dead (SE 158-59). The prayer to Eleggua contains the plea, "Accept what we give you separately, be benevo lent, we ask you not to obstruct what we do" (YO 143-44n. 117). Eleggua in Haiti known as Papa Legba or Papa La Basis the interpreter of the orishas, hermeneut god or go-between who makes communication between gods and humans possible. In all orisha-centered religion, according to Sanchez, the three Eshus said to be allied with the babalao are called Agunacue, Vivakikeiio, and Kikeno Laroye. One of Eleggua s attributes is the hooked tree branch or garabato, which he uses to open the way through the wilderness. The knife blade often found encrusted in the top of the orisha s head in busts and statues indicates his prowess as a warrior and his virtue as a "cutter of spiritual paths" (SAS 71). Bascom calls theYoruba Eshu "the divine en forcer," and Idowu calls Esu a "special relations officer" whose duty it is to visit misfortune upon those who disregard the command of Olodumare, delivered through the Ifa oracle (ID 105; Idowu 80). For Murphy, Eleggua "does resemble the Advocate of the book of Job, restlessly overturning hu man complacency" (SAS 46, 71). Most Lucumi households have an Eleggua made of earth from a crossroads mixed with concrete, with cowrie shells for eyes and mouth, who sits right behind the door that opens to the street. This Eleggua requires regular presents of pastries, the herbal omiero water, sweets,

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fl o (lipterlwo and tobacco. He also likes plums. In his Catholic syncretization he is the Nino (or Christ child) de Antocha, San Antonio de Padua, and the Anima Sola, the Wandering Soul in Pain. His day is Tuesday; his colors are red and black; his sacred number three (CA 3:29). Aaallu or Aaanyii Sold is a giant, the owner of the river and the plain, and, like his (now discredited) Catholic counterpart Christopher, the patron saint of Havana, he is patron of travelers and friend of children, depicted iconographically as carrying a child on his shoulder across a river on his shoulder. By some accounts he fathered Chango and like his son claims the phallic oche or two-headed hatchet among his attributes, along with the oggue or calf's horns. "Agallu," according to Nunez, "dances with large strides, lifting up his legs as if he were getting over obstacles, and picking up children and carrying them away" (DALC 15). Yemayd is goddess of salt waters and maternity, the Great Supernal Mother. She loves children and has adopted many. Her color is the blue associated with the sea, and her dance imitates the fluctuating movement of the waves. Yemaya likes to eat maize, pigeon, cock, and castrated he-goat. She carries a sword and a fan as her insignia. A marine shell serves as her fetish. Yemaya is syncretized with theVirgen de Regla, patron saint of the Bay of Havana. "The stars," writes Cabrera, "are the jewels of Yemaya s mande," and according to one of Cabrera's informants, Yemaya is "the Blessed Mother and the Wet Nurse of the World" (YO 116, 121). As mentioned earlier, the same goddess gave birth to all the orishas and to the sun and moon as well. Notes Cabrera in Yemayd y Ochun, it is this Yemaya, known widely in Cuba asYemu, whom Oggiin violated, thus committing incest with his own mother (25).Yemaya makes an androgynous appearance when she is seen cutting through the thicket with her machete: "In this path she is mannish [marimacho] and dresses as a man." She transforms into a man another time when she fights alongside Chango, for she is "an Obini ologun, a woman who knows how to fight like a soldier." In one of her oldest aspects, Yemaya is a mermaid, a sirena: "she has pearly scales from the waist on down, fishtail, white bulging eyes, round and very open, 'the pupils black, eye brows like thorns and the bosoms very large.'"Yet for all the goddess's mul tiplicity, Cabrera's informant reminds us, "there is no more than one Yemaya. A single one with seven paths" (YO 23, 45, 31, 30). Olokun, called the most ancient avatar of Yemaya, is the amphibious, an drogynous denizen of the deep waters. Cabrera in Yemayd y Ochun calls Olokun an androgynous god: okobo"[o]f amphibious sex." As Cabrera's informant Omi Dina explains, "Fundamentally [Olokun] is male. So you say El Mar.

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TbtlKiiififitytti <> a J. Ritul satin ill imitate if Olikii. IJ !L lisci it Refit, OM Iivui, (ill. And female, la Mar, in other aspects. Therefore, when you enter the sea you should say, Papa, Mama.Yemayi-Olokun." Half human and half fish, Olokun dwells on the ocean bottom, "next to a gigantic marine serpent that they say shows its head during the new moon." It is toYemaya-Olokun that one makes tributary offerings of seven centavos when crossing the Bay of Havana by ferry. Animal sacrifices to the androgynous deity are also placed in the sea (YO 28, 26, 18). And s/he is considered magnificently rich in this aspect, for s/he owns all the sea's treasures. Murphy identifies Olokun as "the orisha of the sea depths who protected [the Afro-Cubans'] ancestors on their ter rible journey from Africa to the New World" (SAS 2). Fire and thunder are the possessions of the virile Chango. He is a woman izer, probably the most popular of orishas in Cuba, and the passionate fiestaloving warrior god of storms who gives license to his "children" to do what feels good.The neolithic hatchets called piedras celestes or piedras de rayo, "thunder stones," are thought to belong to Chango and adorn the altars of Arara and Lucumi alike (M 249). Handsome and seductive, Chango wears bright red (punzo) and white, especially on a sacred garment called bante, which resembles an apron. Chango's other attributes are the sword and cup. Chango gladly accepts sacrifices of ayapd or tortoise, quimbombo or stewed okra, akara or bean fritters, and eco or cornstarch gruel (Simpson 87). In ceremonies dedicated to him, Chango is said to sit atop a sacred mor tar-stool carved out of wood, the pilon. His Catholic double is Santa Barbara

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<4 o ChifterTwt not only because she is the patroness of artillerymen but also because the orisha in some accounts had to disguise himself in woman's clothing loaned him by Oya in order to escape his enemies. No one plays the drum in the guemilere or drum party better than Chango, who traded the Board of Ifa with Orumila for the ability to play and dance. Chango has an almost obses sive fear of death, the Iku, and for that reason Oya could defeat him on one occasion by frightening him with a human skull (S 111; CA 3:44). Yoruba myth frequendy contrasts the passionate Chango with the cool-headed, pa cific, and good-natured Obatala, the artisan of the human species. One wellknown myth, restaged in the play by Ijimere, tells of how Chango as the Oni of Oyo, due to the machinations of Eshu, wrongfully imprisoned Obatala, the wise king of Ife, for the apparent theft of Chango's favorite horse. Obbd symbolizes marital devotion and fidelity. She is considered a minor orisha, associated with a river in Nigeria. Cabrera among others presents a version of the pataki in which Obba prepares a special kaklu, a vegetable stew also called amalu in Anago, for her husband Chango. This amalu is special because Ochun has fooled Obba into cutting off her own ears and adding them to the stew, claiming that this is the way to "bind" (omarrar) her philan dering husband (YO 79). Obba is accordingly portrayed as wearing a scarf or cloth on her head to hide her mutilation. Her attributes include a wooden anvil adorned with implementsand the ear. Her colors are pink and yellow. With Oya and Yewa, she guards the cemetery. In the Catholic Church, she is Santa Rita and/or Santa Catalina (CA 3:48). The warrior goddess Oyd consorts with Chango and often fights at his side. In addition to the cemetery, she owns the lightning and the wind. As Chango s female companion and another of the climatological orishas, Oya like Chango has been known to have lightning shooting out of her mouth. She dances in a frenzy, waving the iruke, the horsetail switch that is her at tribute, whirling about with her colorful skirt ends flying. She is identified with the Catholic Virgen de Candelaria and also, in some locales, with Santa Teresa (APA 171-74). Ochun has been called the Yoruba Aphrodite: goddess of the Oshun river in West Africa and sister to Yemaya, in Cuba she owns the fresh waters, beauty, love, and sexual desire. Cabrera in Yemayd y Ochun writes that Ochun is "the Lover, the personification of sensuality and love, of the force that drives the gods and all creatures to seek out one another and to unite with one another in pleasure" (89). Coquettish, seductive, irresistible, she gives her love freely, often to other women's husbands, capriciously taking it away. Her attributes include mirrors and coral. She loves honey, pastries, and cala-

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The Liceni Sigi Sfstea o (I CIM Oil ii (in is ,WL Ctllectin ! Mirfi htuii (irrilli.OiniTiiidbi bash. She also owns aJbahaca, or basil, which is used in many magical and medicinal mixes. Her color is yellow; her number five, and five are the di aphanous scarves she wears around her waist. Ochun is considered to be Chango s favorite apctcdvi or concubine. In the Catholic Church, look for her in the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, patron saint of Santiago and all of Cuba. The omo-Ochun or child of the goddess prepares for her a favorite dish called ochinchin, made from shrimp, watercress, and almonds. Other favorite foods include she-goat, fish, hen, and beans. The otanes of Ochun are the smooth round stones of riverbeds. She also likes small bells (FS 79-81; CA 3:50-53). Ink, lie, or Erinlc is the nature god who hunts, farms, fishes in rivers and dispenses medicine; he knows the sciences of extracting the bounty of the earth and even symbolizes the earth itself for some. Because he spends six months of the year in the water and the other six on land, Bastide calls Inle a "double deity" (117).Yellow and blue are his colors. His Catholic equivalent is San Rafael. He is danced with the zigzag motion of one who harvests a crop. Cabrera tells the story of how one day Yemaya conceived a wild passion for the amphibious Inle. She abducted the youth and brought him down to

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U o (ItpttrTwo the depth of the sea, where she made love to him to the point of weariness. Desiring to return to the world and to the company of the other orishas, Yemaya abandoned Inle but not without eliminating one problem her pas sion had created: since Inle had learned secrets both earthly and divine, she cut out his tongue. "Note that it is Yemaya who speaks through Inle in the Diloggun" (YO 45). His pataki bears certain similarities to the Greek myth of Endymion. The orisha of hunters and the hunt, Ochosf is the archer whose attribute is a metal bow and arrow and who, as one of the "warriors," is said to "walk" with Eleggua and Oggiin. In Catholicism, this forest spirit corresponds to San Norberto. When he dances, he carries his weapons and moves like a hunter after his game. That creolization modified the pataki was evident when the runaway slaves, who "went for the mountain," invoked him for their protection from recapture or imprisonment (P 17-18). Barnet writes that the popular expression "to have the letter of Ochosi" means "to be on the way to jail, or that some problem with justice approaches the believer." The metal bow and arrow charm, often worn in necklace chains, thus signals Ochosi's desire for justice (FV 182). Orisha-Oko is the orisha of farming and agriculture, the normally chaste and hardworking god whom Obatala commissioned to cultivate yams. Yet Yemaya seduced Orisha-Oko one day in order to procure the secret of the yams from the ingenuous youth. Of Orisha-Oko's starchy tuber, which is J. imitates if OHII nkt, spike, skml ill itktr \m iiplntits. Ittl. DM linn (iki

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TkelKiifSpSntn o a considered sacred, Cabrera reports, "it speaks at night and makes sleepers talk in their sleep" (YO 37). A pair of oxen pulling a plow symbolize this orisha, to whom one would offer sacrifice to ensure a good harvest. OrishaOko s CathoUc double is San Isidro Labrador, but his cult fell off early in Cuba because the first harvests of Cuban agriculture were undeniably the bitter fruits of slave labor (CA 3:61-62). One-legged and one-eyed Osain or Osanyin is the Lord of the Forests, typi cally depicted as hopping on his one foot. He is called noco, one-armed. He has one overlarge ear that is deaf and one tiny ear that hears acutely well. Symbolizing the forces of vegetation, his color is naturally green. To this god of medicines, patron of the curanderos (healers) called osainistas, one must ren der tribute before taking away any of his plants and herbs, essential ingredi ents in the ebbos and cures of Regla de Ocha. Osain loves to smoke, and this habit compels him to appear at night before travelers, asking them for a light. One story explaining Osain s mutilations has it that Chango, angered at Osain s attempts to violate Oya, blasted him with a lightning bolt, destroying one of his eyes, one of his ears, one of his arms, and one of his legs. In another version of the myth, Orumila has just learned from Chango the prepa ration of an ebbo using twelve torches and twelve odduards, or flintstones, resulting in a lightning flash that sets fire to the woods. Osain is burned and maimed in the conflagration.Thus originates the continuing enmity between the god of the forest and the god of lightning (SE 94). Oggiin is orisha of metals, mountain, and forge; a mighty warrior, another rival to Chango, and sometime archdenizen of the forest. He was originally associated with the town of Badagri situated near the mouth of the Ogoun River on the Nigerian coast. Called Ogun in Nigeria, Papa Ogoun in Haiti, and Oggiin in Cuba, he is doubled by the Catholic Santiago or Saint James the Elder. Although revered as a patron by some West African hunters, in Cuba he receives more recognition as the archetypal blacksmith. Like Chango, his brother and rival in arms, Oggiin likes to wear the color red and loves to eat red cocks and red beans with rice. All keys and chains belong to him, which explains his alternative syncretization with San Pedro as the heavenly gatekeeper. A machete, brandished in his dance, also symbolizes him. The fundamentos of Oggun s asiento consist of miniature iron implements kept in a small cauldron: a rake, a sledge, a sword, a pick, a hoe, a machete, a pike, a spade. Babalu-Ayc is the crippled orisha who, like Lazarus, his Catholic double, goes limping about on a crutch, accompanied by a pair of dogs who lick his open wounds. Babahi-Aye is owner of epidemics and diseases, especially skin

TktliuifSifiSntti o ft myth they live in the palm tree, often keeping company there as elsewhere with their prodigal father. As in the typical Yoruba fetishization of twins, the Ibeyi or Obeyi symbolize immortality and bring good fortune, perhaps by their metaphorical doubling of human life (DALC 239). Cuervo Hewitt em phasizes their symmetrical symbolism of cosmic order, balance, and har mony Yemaya is said to adopt "the twins of Heaven" as her wards or grand children.The Kainde andTaewo of Lucumi myth are equivalents to the gemini Castor and Pollux, the Catholic Cosme and Damian, and the Marassas of Vaudou. Their fetish is a pair of hollow wooden dolls that are often painted black, dressed in Chango's red, and connected by a cord representing the umbilicus. Inside the hollows of their dolls, devotees put such ache-charged particulars as human hair and nails, bones, dust, needles, and stones. The typically cheerful twins are wise beyond their years but love sweets and mis chief (APA 182, 248). Orumila or Orunmila or Orumbila is the owner and master of Ifa, the Yoruba oracle and divination system, and therefore considered patron of babalaos. Idowu writes that the name of Orunmila is the contracted form of Orun-l'-omo-d-ti-ld: "Only Heaven knows the means of salvation" (75). Also called "Ifa," perhaps by metonymy, Orumila is the mediator between humans and gods: purveyor of wisdom, reader of destiny and prescriber of sacrifices nec essary for solving problems or achieving aims. Called Kisimba in Kikongo, he is syncretized with Saint Francis of Assisi or San Francisco, most likely because the ekpuele or Yoruba divining chain resembles the rosary of the Catho lic saint. The beads in his eleke necklace are green and yellow and his at tribute is the Tablero or Tabla de Ifd, the divining board that symbolizes the world. In the liturgical calendar, the date of the orisha's remembrance falls on Octo ber 4, on which day it is appropriate to utter, Maferere Orumila, "Thanks be to Ifa" (S 52; CA 3:38-39). The centrality of divination in Afro-Cuban religion explains the impor tance of Orumila s figure throughout the narrative tradition. According to the myth recorded by Abimbola, Olodumare sent Orumila "to use his pro found wisdom to put the earth in order" (Ifd 9). Members of Lucumi society consult Ifa at the outset of every major event in their lives. At the birth of a child, Ifa will identify that child's orisha, his or her future prospects and problems, and the steps the parents should take to bring ache and good for tune to the child. Ifa can also extend advice on finding a partner, on under taking a journey, or on making decisions at all the critical junctures. Abimbola characterizes Ifa's knowledge as that which gives order to everything: "With out Ifa, the importance of the other Yoruba gods would diminish. Ifa man is

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II o (iipterbi being punished by the other gods, he can only know this by consulting Ifa. If a community is to make sacrifice to one of its gods, it can only know this by consulting Ifa. So that in this way, Ifa is the only active mouthpiece of Yoruba traditional religion taken as a whole. As a mouthpiece, Ifa serves to popular ize the other Yoruba gods; he serves to immortalize them" (Abimbola, Ifd 3-4). As in all Afro-Cuban religions, the practices of sacrifice, initiation, and possession depend on divination for instructions on proper procedure and prayer. Onimila thus mediates between gods and humans and between hu mans and their ancestors. With his ally Eshu-Heggua to enforce the divine will, Onimila and his followers are considered the interpreters of that will for all intents and purposes. Yet the Ifa system is not the sole source of coun sel, for at least another system of divination, the diloggiin, is considered the more popular and accessible oracle in Afro-Cuba. I will discuss this oracle after examining the Lucumi rituals of initiation and burial of the dead. Initiation The diviner, through casting the Ifa necklace or diloggiin shells, may deter mine ifa client should be initiated. That is, the client's personal clcdd or orisha guardian, may require initiation or the diviner may prescribe it as the cure for a chronic illness. Initiation, a measure not taken by the majority of devotees, would also be the first step toward priesthood (TOM 2). To become initiated, the neophyte or iyawo must in fact pass a series of initiations culminating in the ritual called the asiento.The following summary outline of the complex initiation process will serve as an introduction to a ceremony that Castellanos and Castellanos, after Van Gennep and Turner, have rightly described as "liminal" insofar as its rites signify a passage through transitional stages or "thresholds" (CA 3:91). The initiation consists of about a week of prayer, sacrifice, and other rituals. During a period of intensive training, the iyawo or novice is placed under the care of the padrino or madrina (godfather or godmother), who isolates the iyawo from the outside world, dresses him or her in white, and teaches the novice the mythology, doctrine, and rituals of the cult. The rituals that follow in the preparatory stage, together with the indoctrination, prepare the mind and body of the iyawo for eventual possession in the state of trance by the orisha. The asiento rituals, or the initiation ceremonies proper, conclude the weeklong preparation. The asiento, which "makes the saint," is held inside the igbodu or inner sanctuary of the ile ocha temple. For this the iyawo*s head is shaved, and on it the madrina paints concentric circles of yellow, blue, red, and white dye

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ItelKiiffifiSfStei o II an invitation for the orisha to come in. The padrino or madrina takes care to save the hair and remnants of the dye so that they may one day be buried with the initiate after his or her death (S 36). Before undergoing the actual asiento, the novice receives a revocation de cabcza, a ritual cleansing of the head. In the revocation, the madrina anoints the novice's head with a paste made with coconut pulp, coconut butter, and cascarilla (powdered eggshell), and she calls on the novice s protecting orisha, also called dngel de \a guardia, to purify and protect the neophyte from evil.The padrino or madrina then gives the iyawo a name in the faith, a baptismal gesture in recognition of putting on the iyawo s "rebirth." Next comes the ceremony of the eleke necklaces, the imposition dc los collates. The iyawo receives these elekes in the colors of the orishas Obatala, Ochun.Yemaya, and Chango, in addition to those of his or her special protector, the aforementioned angel de la guarda or eleda. Next, the iyawo receives the guerreros, the warriors Oggun, Eleggua, Ochosi, and Osun, manifested by their attributes and their necklaces in their characteris tic colors (TOM 2-3). On the third day of the asiento, as explained by Cabrera, the diloggiin shells are consulted in the meeting of babalaos called the itd, which will serve to inform the novice about the past and the future as well as about dangers to guard against. In this context, the diloggiin ritual begins with the babalocha or iyalocha requesting permission and blessings from Olodumare; then he or she greets (ayuba or moyubba) first the dead and then the padrinos. The sign of sixteen cowries with their mouths turned up, if it appears, will indicate that the iyawo will become a diviner and thus receive the otanes or stones of all the orishas, begin apprenticeship in the Ifa, and learn the secrets of Osain and ewe, herbs and plants (YO 179, 184). The day called the ka ri ocha ("putting the orisha upon the head") or kii ocha ("crowning the orisha") is a birth day, the day the iyawo, if the preced ing ceremonies have gone well, dies to the old life and person and is born into a new life in the saints. The ritual bathing, changes of clothing, isolation, and other treatments suggestive of birth or infantilism on the part of the iyawo have indicated that this ceremony is indeed a liminal rite of passage. The novice then passes into the new life of the omo-orisha or child of the orisha once, or if, possession takes place. In possession, the initiate, "mounted" by the orisha, or "making" the saint, will also become the orisha's "horse" (caballo) and act, dance, talk, and otherwise move in the manner characteristic of the possessing orisha. Orisha and iyawo are also said to form a contract in the asiento. The term asiento itself proceeds from the language of jurisprudence and the history of the conquest; one of Cabrera s informants

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n o CfeipterTm recalls its special meaning of "annotation of a shipment, entered so it isn't forgotten." The obligation suggests mutuality, for it is by serving the orishas that the omo-orisha benefits, living by the words "to worship is to give in order to receive" (YO 128).The asiento is therefore also a settling, a stabiliz ing and seating of another "consciousness" into one's own, and the marking of a penetration into the mysteries of the cult (SAS 16). At the end of the initiation rituals, the novice finishes by gathering the attributes and paraphernalia of his orishas, thus performing the act called "levantar santo" (raising or gathering up the saint), and then goes home to add those sacred objects to his or her domestic altar. One year and seven days after the asiento, the sponsoring madrina or padrino will pass on the libreta or notebook, where information essential to practice the religion has been noted down, to the iyawo (SR 16). As previously mentioned, not all believers in Regla de Ocha are initiated, but initiation is a mark of seriousness about the religion. Some initiations can be very costly if the sponsors command a high esteem in the community and if expensive animals such as sheep or bulls are required for sacrifice. (Cros Sandoval reports that the "initiation cost" in the United States, due to these factors, "might fluctuate from a modest $3,000 to $6,000 or more" [TOM 2]). //^/^. Passage into Death Among theYoruba, death marks the beginning of a journey into another life (Idowu 190). Afro-Cubans continue theYoruba ritual of ituto, which amounts to a send-off ensuring the comfort and well-being of the deceased on that journey. To give an idea of the funeral rites identified with the Regla de Ocha, I will summarize the mortuary ritual of one kind of ituto, the burial of a babalao, as Gabriel Pasos described it to Lourdes Lopez (Lopez, Estudio 42-45). On the day of his funeral, in the house where he lived, the deceased is dressed in the clothing and beds of his kariocha, for as he entered this life in the faith, so shall he leave it. The babalao in charge of the ituto sits upon a mat and produces nineteen ikincs or palm nuts, removing three of them to stand as "witnesses" and going on to perform a registro or divination reading with the remaining sixteen. The reading gives information and instructions concerning the funeral of the deceased babalao. Then, to mark the passage through the threshold separating this world from the next, the presiding priest either breaks the warriorsEleggua, Oggun, Ochosi, and Osunthat the babalao received as an iyawo in his initiation or keeps those warriors

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TklMiilSinSfStci o B with other artifacts for burial with the body of the deceased. A cleansing ceremony or limpieza follows, which includes an aspersion with dried okra and poplar leaves. Animals are then offered in sacrifice: a rooster goes to feed the four warriors, but first it is passed over the body of the deceased to re movedcspojarany evil influences remaining there. Two hens go to feed the stones in Onimila's sopera or tureen, but after the hens are killed, the nine teen palm nuts from the divination ritual are inserted through the anus of one of the hens. The two hens are placed in the sopera, and this, with its voluminous contents, is placed behind the body of the deceased, to be emp tied into his grave just before he is buried. Another procedure, notes Sanchez, is to "erase," borrar, from the head of the deceased what was put there in the asiento; another is that of combing his head with the comb from the same initiation and dressing him in the same clothes he wore in the beginning of his life in the religion (139). Once purification and the final dressing have been carried out, the babalaos in attendance light sixteen candles, place them around the corpse, and walk around it, intoning the special funeral chant.The leader then sacrifices a dove and extinguishes the candles with its blood. All participants rap on the coffin in a rhythm with three beats and a pause. The obi or coconut divination is performed to inquire if anything else needs be done. Before the coffin is closed for the last time, the deceased is placed inside with the dove, the candles, and the coconut pieces used in the ceremony, alongside the personal artifacts of the deceased, should the divination indicate that these be included. The deceased's eleda, now made tranquil, can go to render accounts to Olodumare (Lopez 45). Divination oil MarrativcrThc Dilopn As the preceding accounts of the asiento and ituto illustrate, the myth, ritual, doctrine, institutional codes, and experience of Lucumi religion have entered literature in recodified form as narrative texts, constituting new transculturations and reinterpretations of the Afro-Cuban tradition. Other, more literary texts that recodify the texts of Lucumi religion, as readings in subsequent chapters will demonstrate, often draw on Santeria s body of sa cred or mythical narratives containing etiological, cosmogonic, and moral messages. To understand the uses of those sacred narratives, it is essential to know the place and function of divination in Afro-Cuban religion since divi nation consists in a practice of a narrative-based knowledge that mediates between earth (aiye) and heaven (orun). In pragmatic terms, divination offers counsel and guidance to believers,

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14 o (kflpterTw who consult it at all critical transitions in the life cycle. Of the three principal methods of divination practiced in Cubathe coconut or obi, the sixteen cowries or diloggun, and Ifathe third one, Ifa, which only babalaos are permitted to practice, seems the most prestigious. Barnet, comparing it with the other two, calls it an oracle of "greater rank but not of greater efficacity" (FV 173).The obi, on the other hand, can be practiced by all believers and the diloggun by all santeros and santeras. The divination narratives called patakis, also called historias (stories, narra tives) or caminos (paths or roads), are recited or at least recalled during the diloggun and Ifa ceremonies. The system of patakis preserves and organizes the bases of Afro-Cuban religious practice; the babalao Julio Garcia Cortez assures that "the root of conduct" is found in the patakis" (ES 13 7). Versions of patakis have been collected and published by Garcia Cortez, Cabrera, Rogers, Cros Sandoval, de la Soledad and Sanjuan, Gonzalez-Wippler, and Castellanos and Castellanos. Collections of patakisin texts that now have served as guidebooks to the method of the oracleafford a unique opportu nity to see how the narratives of an Afro-Cuban divination corpus function in the production of counsel and knowledge.2 In the following I will outline an isagogic, or an introduction to exegesis, of the diloggun ritual and narratives, drawing on examples from the above mentioned writers. My thesis here is that the texts of the diloggun not only preserve the narrative dis courses central to the oracle, but they participate in a specific kind of intertextual activity. Even when the diviner recalls preformed interpretations at taching to indicated figures and narratives, divination consists in the diviner's reading of a destiny into the gaps between texts, signs, and symbolic acts that together constitute the divination event. For Jules-Rosette, whose commentary suggests a useful frame of reference, African divination in general is a self-validating system of thought of fering "strategies for handling problems in daily life" and which therefore must be understood as mediating between the client's misfortunes and the social structure (551, 557). Similarly in Afro-Cuba, the oracles are consulted not only during initiations and other important ceremonies, as noted in my preceding accounts of the asiento and the ituto rituals, but on every impor tant occasion involving crisis or transition in the client's life (see ISD 5-9, 111-15). As a self-validating system, divination is an art of producing significations for making sense of life; in other words, divination is an art that, as Pierre Guiraud states in his study of semiology, "projects upon the signified uni verse the shadow of its own structure" (82). As interpretive revision and

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HtliCiiifyfiSyMi o /! verbal performance, divination consists not so much in "seeing into the future" as in inscribing, reading, and rewriting the signs of a futurity imbri cated with the presentthat is, a present re-presented by the signs of the oracle. In ritual practice, divination involves recalling and reinterpreting the prayers, proverbs, and patakis that make up the intertexts of the diloggun ritual. Narrative knowledge on which the ceremony depends is therefore not fixed into a static structure but rather continually reproduced in the divina tion ceremony. The ceremonial art of the diloggun is known by several names: echarse ios caracoles, "casting the shells" (the word caracol having this sense in Cuba); hacerse una vista, or, roughly, "taking a look"; registrarse, meaning "register" or "search"; and bajar el caracol, casting (or dropping) the shells. The shells are also called elifds (MS 60; ISD 13). Perhaps because it is more commonly used in the Americas than I fa, the diloggun, rather than the Ifa practiced exclusively by the babalaos, tends more often to provide the Afro-Cubanist writer with ritual narrative sources. Bascom attributes the diloggun*s greater popularity in the Americas to sev eral factors: to its greater simplicity, to the popularity of such orishas who are associated with the diloggun as Chango,Yemaya, and Ochun, and to the fact that both men and women can practice sixteen cowrie divination (SC 3). There are in fact eighteen or twenty-one shells included in the whole divination set, but two shells, called adele or edele, are separated from the six teen actually thrown in the divination procedure, and those two are assigned the task of "keeping guard" and watching over the session. The sixteen shells that are cast form the centerpiece of the registro or consultation. Each shell is the boca del santo, "mouth of the saint," through which the orishas speak (de la Soledad and Sanjuan 96).The cowrie shells, of the species Cyprea moneta, have themselves been opened and filed down on their backsides so that they will lay flat when their "mouths," the dentated natural openings, are turned up ward. Such shells are also called aye, a name translated as "conteston" or "ser de otro mundo," suggesting that they answer from another world. As befit ting their use and value, the diloggun shells are washed with omiero and fed with omiero and sacrificial blood (Cabrera,YO 181; Rogers 4-9, 11). With each throw of the sixteen shells, it is the number of shells with their mouthlike "speaking" side facing up that determines the figureodu or letra of the cast. Cabrera defines odu as "'The siblings of Orumila' . Sign or situation of the shells and seeds in divination" (AVL 236). For Canet, "the sixteen original odus correspond to the first sixteen narratives told to Ifa" (57). Each odu figure corresponds to a particular set of patakis (somewhat as

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H o (Interim a book tide heads its chapters) along with the set of associated proverbs, ebbo (or magic-sacrificial formulas), and orisha names. Each odu moreover bears its own proper name, which is often the name of a character appearing in some of its patakis. In the following list of odu names, each one corresponding to a number of cowries with their mouths up, the first column comes from GonzalezWippler; the second, from Garcia Cortez; the third, from Cabrera (ISD 17; ES 139; KI 48ff.).The names in the three columns also exemplify some of the variations found in spelling and pronunciation of the odu names. 1. Okana Sodde 2. Eyioko 3Oggunda 4. Eyorosun or Iroso 5. Oche 6. Obbara 7. Oddi 8. Eyeunle 9. Ossa 10. Offtin mafun 11. Ojuani chober 12. Eyila chebora 13. Metanla 14. Merinla 15. Manunla 16. Mediloggun Ocana Eyioko Ogunda Ollorozun Oche Obara Ordi Elleunle Osa Ofun mafun Ojuani Chober Ellila chebora Metanla Merinla Marula Medilogun Okana Eyioko Ogunda Eyorosun Oche Obara Odi Eyeunle Osa Ofun Ojuani Eyila Metala Merinla Manula Meridilogun It should be noted that the odu with numbers higher than that of Eyila chebora (twelve) are not normally read by diviners who are ranked lower than the babalao.When figures thirteen through sixteen appear, the diloggun remains silent, and the client may be sent to Ifa for further consultation. The more experienced oriate or italero priest presiding over initiation ceremonies may however read off the odus above twelve by referring to the odu, along with corresponding texts, from which the former are derived or "born" (ISD 17). The diviner s paraphernalia supporting the sixteen cowrie shells includes the five tokens known collectively and individually as igbo. The igbo-supplements are called otd, aye, ewe ayb, exo aworan, and cfun; they are, respectively, a small black stone, a white shell, a seed, a doll's head, and a piece of cascarilla or pulverized egg shell. Prior to each casting, the diviner gives the client the

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TltlKMffipSfSttl 0 I? stone and the cascarilla to hold, one in each hand. After casting, the diviner asks to see the token in one of the hands, and that particular igbo will decide the direction of the oracle's message (YO 181-82; Rogers 11; CA 3:118 19;ISD83, 154). Having surveyed the procedure of the diloggun ritual, we now turn to the function of the patakis in the system. The patakis of the oracle fulfill their role as the textual grounding of diagnosis and prognostication. A number of writers on the diloggun observe that the babalocha or iyalocha reads into the pataki narratives a certain comparison with events in the life of the divina tion client. Canet refers to the santero's procedure of comparing the odu's narrative with "what's happening" (37). Garcia Cortez remarks on the un canny correspondence of the narrative with the client's personality and situ ation (ES 137). For Rogers, the letra selects a "mythology": "its story always compares the character of the other world with that of this one" (18). The diviner, writes Cros Sandoval, must know these narratives by memory and "should be capable of choosing that one that relates best to the life and problem of the client" (RA 82). De la Soledad and Sanjuan underscore as well the method of comparison in a passage in which the authors liken the letra, or the pataki itself, to "a fable that also has a moral, [to] these mytho logical stories that compare the characters of that other world with this one, or that place the consultant in [the role of] protagonist of these stories assur ing them, through the same, of the response that they seek in life" (98). Much of the registro thus consists in a personalizing interpretation of the pataki, focusing on the narrative's semantic level, making the client over into the character of a new narrative. GonzalezWippler confirms the unique char acter of each reading as determined by the particular odu interpretation: "Each individual interpreter adds his own definitions as he desciphers [sic] the oracle, but the meanings given here form the basis of the registro." In addition, the "interpretations given here do not apply to every consultant, and it is up to the santero and his understanding of the odu to determine which of the admonitions attached to a pattern apply to his client" (ISD 44). The authority of that interpretation is premised on the idea that the diloggun enables the diviner to read the destiny that the client, and/or the client's ancestor, chose before birth; the oracle does so by putting the diviner in touch with the client's ancestral guardian soul, called the eledd (Rogers 18, 22). In carrying out the sacrifice or ebbo prescribed in the recited narrative, the client cannot change his or her destiny in any fundamental way, but the client can make the best of the situation by increasing the probability of receiving possible benefits (such as long life, money, marriage, children, etc.)

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n o (lipttrbt or by averting anticipated evils (such as fighting, sickness, death, want of money, etc.) (SC 8, 33-34). Gonzalez-Wippler elsewhere calls the patakis "aids in the interpretation of the oracle" and "a philosophical explanation of various natural laws in parable form," for they "explain why things are the way they are and what is likely to happen according to the immutable cosmic laws" (TO 121). The narratives indeed fit into the generic category of the fable or the parable; that is, into the genre of stories of didactic intent with either an ethical message or an etiological explanation of natural phenomena. Often, though not always, an odu will convey the tale of one or more particular orishas. Other characters may be kings or anthropomorphized animals and plants that play major or secondary roles in the narrative. All these characters belong to a mythical "past" that mirrors the client's present and foreshadows the client's future. The diviner and the knowing client will therefore search out in the mythical stories a precedent that would clarify the problem and guide future conduct. Significantly, the plot of the pataki often involves the protagonist's consultation with a diviner. The pataki's protensive social drama is framed within the three-part struc ture common to all the Yoruba ese Ifd and the Afro-Cuban pataki. In both narratives, one usually finds the following: a statement of the mythological case precedent, naming diviner(s), client(s), and problem; the outcome of carrying out (or of not carrying out) the prescribed sacrifice, often with an explanation of what remained obscure in the first part; and an application of the exemplum to the present client's situation, that is, the diviner's interpre tation of the data for the client (see ID 122-27). In the Americas, published Afro-Cubanist versions of sacred narratives of ten provide the "pre-texts" or scripts for ritual recitation. In many cases, those narratives include not only transcriptions from verbal performance but rather genuine rewritings. Due to the obstacles to sustaining long appren ticeships in the art in the Americas, those learning to read the diloggun will commit narrative materials to writing: the myths, rituals, prayers, ebbo, and other liturgical texts go into the aforementioned notebooks called libretas (CA 3:95-96). In the multigeneric format of the libretas, the same materials undergo a textual syncretization, with new juxtapositions, combinations, and valorizations. The patakis, unlike the more stable ese Ifa, learned by lengthy oral transmission in Yoruba society, become more personalized and more concise by this process of individualized recording. Cuervo Hewitt attests that "of the manuscript or copybooks of patakis I have seen, one sees in America a tendency to synthesize the most important elements of each odu

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Tit linii fill Sjstti o I) in very short anecdotes, with which one loses perhaps the original ese, but on the other hand gains the dynamic vitality of the myth-poetry in a collec tive, colloquial, and archetypal language of the Cuban people" (APA 77). Having survived the African diaspora, reincorporated in the libretas, the ese of Ifa or the patakis of the diloggiin are thereby simplified and reduced down to their narrative prose core. The libreta becomes a practical bible and bre viary for the Afro-Cuban believer. Andres Rogers's practical guide Los caracoles: historia it sus Ictras (The seashells: story of their letters; 2nd ed., 1973) has the look of a long, well-researched libreta, one that seems to maintain the colloquial expressions, idiosyncratic spellings, run-on sentences, and other ungrammaticalities that could characterize both an awo's (diviner's) speech and the initiate's writing in a private libreta. Another significant divergence between the African merindinlogun and the Afro-Cuban diloggiin can be seen in previously mentioned matters of per formance. In Nigeria, the diviner will recite the ese or divination verses until the client hears and selects the one that seems most appropriate to the prob lem to be solved (ID 22). In the Americas, on the other hand, the santeras and santeros who read the diloggiin in registros tend, due to limitations of time or resources, to suppress the recital of patakis, limiting themselves to reciting the proverb or to giving the indicated counsel. Diviners in the Regla de Ocha will however recite patakis, including some of the lesser known, on the third day of the initiation ceremony, el dia del ltd (YO 203). On other days, the diviner may choose the one pataki appropriate to the client's problem out of those belonging to the set of the indicated odu. In another transculturative shift, the diloggiin as it has evolved in Cuba has emulated the complexity of the Ifa system through the practice of read ing pairs of odu together, such that the odus Eyioko (two mouths up) and Osa (nine mouths up), subsequently cast, would combine to form EyiokoOsa (two-nine). Such a combination of two different odu requires the com bining of their two narratives in the same interpretation, although the di viner will emphasize the meaning of the first odu of the pair (ISD 16). The pairing of odus means that the number of figures that could be cast would equal the sixteen possible combinations of mouths up and down for each cast, multiplied by the sixteen possible combinations of a second cast: 16 x 16 = 256 (CA 3:118). (Garcia Cortez does refer to a simpler method, to be practiced only once a month for each client, which consists in throwing the cowries four times and looking up their interpretation in a book [ES 482].) The 256 total possible odu pairs would correspond to all of 256 sets of prayers, proverbs, stories, and sacrifice prescriptions, all of which the seri-

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tl o (kiptirlwt ous diviner must memorize during a long and arduous training period. In the absence of opportunities for apprenticeship, written texts naturally sup ply the apprentice with a study guide and "second memory" for preserving and handling this immense base of information (KI 83-84). It is important to keep in mind that it is the orishas as well as the dead (cgungun) who are said to create the evils or benefits predicted by the diloggun, and that a number of divinities speak through each of the odu figures, as do Chango and others through odu 6, Obara (ISD 56). The "presence" of the orisha s (or ancestor's) voice is one factor that influences the selection and reading of the pataki(s) considered appropriate to the client's situation. To reinforce the divine presence of the sacred voice, the diviner makes a ritual invocation and offering to the orishas in Lucumi. This act, denominated by the verb moyubbar, takes place in the initial stages of the divination ritual (Rogers 13-15; de la Soledad and Sanjuan 96). And since each odu is it self considered a minor orisha, each one requires its own ritual prayers (YO 186-87). To illustrate the oracle's connection with the orishas: Oggun, truculent god of iron and the forge, speaks through or in odu 3, Ogunda. Because Oggun also oversees or "presides" over Ogunda, its appearance presages that Oggun "himself" may also appear in some form to endanger the client. Ogunda thus forewarns the client against attacking others with weapons of iron, and the client should avoid iron in all its other forms as well. The prov erb corresponding to Ogunda is either "Dispute, tragedy for some reason" or "The Dead (One) on foot," and the disquieting patakis of Ogunda all speak ominously of conflict, strife, and attendant dangers. In one of those patakis, the character Erura hides from his enemies in a large earthenware jug (tinajon), preventing his dog from climbing in with him. Although the dog would prefer to stay with his master, it returns to the village and brings back enemies, who quickly capture Erura and reward the dog (Rogers 18, 72; de la Soledad and Sanjuan 104; ES 192-93, 486;YO 189, 193-94). In another pataki of Ogunda, Laquin entrusts to his friend Adofin the safe keeping of some money and merchandise and then goes away on a trip. During Laquin's absence, Adofin throws a party during which his friend's valuables are stolen. Laquin returns, learns of the loss, publicly accuses his friend of the theft, and fights with him. Since the narrative anticipates simi lar events in the client's life, the diviner forewarns, "Beware that they don't accuse you of robbery," or, alternatively, "Do not trust anyone with your secrets" (Rogers 73;YO 204; de la Soledad and Sanjuan 104-5; ES 207-8; ISD 49).

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TNliciiiSiiitotti o tl As the texts of Ogunda exemplify, each odu or letra comes associated with a proverb, the refrdn that heads the whole set of texts included under the odu. The odu named Osa (number nine) tells the client, "Your friend is your worst enemy," and it follows that betrayal by friends is a theme that runs through Osa's patakis. It should be noted that proverbs enjoy a special truthvalue in Yoruba-Lucumi culture, as suggested by Chief I. O. Delano's obser vation, "A proverb can drive home a point or describe a situation in a few striking words: hence theYoruba proverb . meaning 'a proverb is a horse which can carry one swiftly to the idea sought"' ("Proverbs" 77). In the registro reading, the proverb may be allowed to dominate or frame the glo bal meaning of the reading. It does so in three ways: it "signifies the point of support where rests the letter in question," "the basic points" for speaking from the diloggun; it conveys in moralistic "idiomatic expressions" the mes sages of the odu; and, corroborating our sense of the proverb's focusing power, it "serve[s] to orient in registros."This orienting function requires an interpretive act of matching, comparing, and combining a proverb with the stories connected to its odu. Gonzalez-Wippler adds that of the combined proverbs of the odu pair, those of the first odu will carry more weight than those of the second, although the double odu will have a proverb of its own (delaSoledadandSanjuan98, 121-22; Rogers 18;RA82;ES 147;ISD23). The Afro-Cuban use of proverbs, let me mention in passing, recalls Ken neth Burke's concept, developed in The Philosophy of Literary Form, of proverbs both as epitomes of recurrent situations and as narrative cores of literary works.These works, Burke points out, make sense when considered as "prov erbs writ large." The proverb so conceived offers neither truth nor definitive interpretation but a strategy for coping with a situation, or attitudinal adjust ments. Literature can be read as texts that are structured on axioms, a feature that qualifies them to serve as "equipment for living" or as "medicine" that changes the reader s epistemological orientation toward a given set of cir cumstances (Burke, Philosophy 293-304). Another clear correlation between proverb and divination narrative ob tains in the case of Odi, odu 7. For Odi melli (7-7) specifically, the proverb goes, "Where the grave was dug for the first time."The proverb alludes to the legendary manner in which the character Mofa instituted the practice of bury ing the dead: after discovering his wife in an adulterous affair, he buried heralive. Since this story illustrates Odi's theme of "betrayal between hus band and wife, of tragedy and blood" (ES 493), the odu foretells of trans gression and terror: "it is death, fear, sicknesses, calumnies, gossip and curiosity. It speaks of vicious people who break their customs and their tradi-

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tl o CbipterTwo tions." It follows that clients drawing Odi may be hving in a state of constant fright or alarm, suffering insomnia or dreaming of the dead; they are invited to learn from the precedent and follow the odu's admonition. The clients' initiation into Regla de Ocha may be in order. If they fail to heed the warn ing, so the logic of comparisons goes, something like the fate of Odi s wife may befall them (YO 189; Rogers 94, 96; RA 88-89; de la Soledad and Sanjuan 115, 116.) As this reading of Odi indicates, the oracle has a diagnostic as well as prognostic function, by which the iyalocha or babalocha (santera or santero) gains knowledge of the client's eleda or spirit-double and thereby knowl edge of the client's life condition. For example, the odu Okana sode, corre sponding to one mouth-up cowrie, is a "fearful" sign. Boding ill for the client, it calls upon the diviner to cleanse the room. This limpieza ritual in cludes taking a piece of meat, smearing it with palm oil, and throwing it into the street for any dog to take away (ES 483; RA 83). For Okana sode says that the client is guilty of impiety, dangerously "backward" in spiritual matters (de la Soledad and Sanjuan 99), "unbelieving and expeditious." A rationale for these conclusions may be inferred from one pataki for Okana sode: there was a man who believed in witches but irreverendy mocked the orishas, in whom he did not believe. But down comes Chango to possess one of his omos, and the mounted orisha accurately tells the man the correct number of people (eighteen) to be found inside a house familiar to the man. When the prediction comes true, the repentant man, now a believer, throws him self at the foot of the saint (YO 192, 193, 203-4; Rogers 63-64). Serving the purposes of prediction, diagnosis, therapy, and conversion, the patakis also serve to orient individual thought and action through a mean ingful sign universe that is, in part, a projection of the divination system itself, assuring that natural or social phenomena bear a personal significance for their "readers." The odu Eyioko, two mouths up, indicates the two prov erbs "Fight for the obtainment of a thing" and "Ofo, arrow between brothers," both thus foretelling of conflict. These proverbs also link up with the pataki of Ode, one of the avatars of the hunting god Ochosi. On every hunt in which he catches white doves, Ode performs the ritual of leaving the doves next to a silk cotton tree so that Orishanla can drink up their blood. Ode's wife, anxious to know why her husband regularly brings home those bloodless birds, one day follows her husband, hides behind a tree, and spies upon the secret ritual. An angry Orishanla discovers the curious woman and curses her by giving her the blood of the doves, precisely in the form of a

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The Ucini SifB Sjsten o I] monthly menstruation (YO 189. 205; Rogers 70). In de la Soledad and Sanjuan s version, Orishanla curses the wife in these words: '"The blood that the doves, which your husband brought you, did not have, from now on you will see it run from your womb every month'" (103). In the terms of a patriarchalist, even misogynist myth, the odu Eyioko thus "explains" the ori gin of the menstrual cycle as it warns the client of relatives who will watch for the opportunity to betray him (ES 485). As the foregoing comparisons demonstrate, the divinerperhaps like the literary interpreterlooks for a common thread among the narratives, prayers, and proverbs comprising an odu, although such coherence need not be readily apparent. It is also evident that the inner logic of the divination text, so interpreted, functions to reproduce the coherence of the belief system in which it plays a central role. Cros Sandoval displays this internal validation for the system in explicating the figure Oche, indicated by five shells mouths up. That odu recalls the story of the pig who declines to eat the fattening food the owner brings to the corral but chooses instead to eat only plantain shoots and garlic bushes. By habitually lying next to the fence of the corral and staying slim, the pig avoids butchering and wears out a ditch in the ground through which he will lead all the other pigs to their eventual salvation. Instead of reading into the parable an apparent message concerning the advantages of self-re straint and patience, Cros Sandoval (citing her informant) stresses the anal ogy that the pataki makes to patrilineal orisha worship: "The needle carries the thread; one makes a hole and the rest escape through the same place. Which of your ancestors made [or became] the saint? You and your family should be initiated too" (RA 86-87). Counterposed to such references to the Lucumi belief system are narrative reflections on the divination system itself. Self-validating references to the oracle appear in many of the patakis. I have already noted the importance of the divination precedent as an implicit model of behavior, whereby protago nists of patakis often resort to consulting with Orumila or another diviner before undertaking a major task or project. Frequently, too, the outcome of complying or not complying with the prescription validates the oracle. In Iroso melli (4), Obi seeks advice from the diviner that would help him avoid capture by death, la Iku. Obi dutifully carries out the ebbo-sacrifice, which involves placing animals, palm oil, and his own clothing between the roots of a tree. Orumila warns that Obi will experience a great fright but tells him to stay in place in order to find out the cause of that fright. True to the

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14 o (kipterbe prediction, the tree at the foot of which Obi leaves the offering comes alive and makes as if to lunge and seize him in its outstretched branches. The terrified Obi summons up enough courage to stop running and return to examine the tree. The tree, now split apart, reveals a large amount of cowrie money, owo, in its interior. The discovery of unexpected fortune concurs with the idea of the wealth of Yemaya, the orisha who speaks through Iroso, and with the matching proverb, "No one knows what is hidden at the bottom of the sea" (YO 188, 207-8).The proverb may allude to treasure, mystery, and surprise; an inheritance may be forthcoming (de la Soledad and Sanjuan 106, 107). The fulfillment of prediction in Obi's salvation and reward also vali dates the intelligence of the diviners, those who identify themselves as chil dren of Orumila, owner of the diloggun and Ifa. Guaranteed as well in such systemic self-referencing is the efficacy of sacrifice, already mentioned as a motivic element in the patakis. The sacrifice prescribed to the client is often identical to the sacrifice performed by the protagonist of the pataki. It is well for the client to remember, as Bascom notes, that "the object of divination is to determine the correct sacrifice, and nothing is gained if it is not offered" (SC 8, 28-29). Obara, in odu 6, gains nothing indeed by failing to carry out the ebbo advised by Onimila (de la Soledad and Sanjuan 112-14). Obara consequently earns the contempt of his father the Oba, or king, when the elephant he says he killed has disap peared. Exiled from the kingdom for his alleged mendacity, Obara eventually returns to Orumila. Orumila prescribes a double sacrifice this time, and re monstrates with righteous indignation: "if you had done ebbo when I told you, you would not have gone through the humiliation, obstacles and mis ery that you suffer today, and how different everything would have been. Disobedience is a carpenter making boxes for the dead" (YO 209-11). As Orumila reproachfully reminds Obara directlyand the client indirectlythe oracle demands respect and obedience. The diloggun autho rizes the wisdom that the diviner possesses as it internally reproduces and sanctions hierarchy in the broader social structure. Yet the diloggun is, more than a mere instrument of social manipulation or mystification, "the active 'memory' of a social whole" (Saldafia 13 2). The diloggun as a social practice assumes the function of what could be called a comprehensive and accessible information recall system, a database organizing and articulating its vast re serve of narrative knowledge for the good of the community3 In a mythological perspective, divination tells us that this world is a re flection of the celestial world whose image is captured in the odu narratives.

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TheliCMfSifiSystm o J! "Don't forget," says the narrator of Cabrera s "Se hace ebbo" (One makes sacrifice), "that whatever happens in the world already happened in another time; and first, before time began down here, it happened up in heaven." With implications for divination, the same story refers to the idea of a divine scripture or inscription, for it is through oracles that we find out the history written by Obatala, Olofi's representative, "about every one of his children what Obatala writes every day or at every moment." And it is Orumila s task to read the divine will written in that "language of destiny" (PQ 204-5, 209). My readings of the texts and discourse practices constituting Lucumi sign systems, including divination, has assumed the relative autonomy of those texts and practices within spheres of semiotic activity set within the cultures and subcultures of a society. As the order of self-referential signification within the diloggun demonstrates, Lucumi sign systems actuate a systemic prin ciple of negativity, both with relation to the environment external to the system (inasmuch as any "outside" to the whole system can be so identified from the system's perspective) and by internal differentiations among signifiers and their signifieds. Although the system is structured by internal differentiation and supplementation, the metaphysics built into the system sustains a faith in "transcendental centers"the gods, the ancestors, ache that would control, from an external position, the processes internal to the system. Yet those transcendental centers are but organizing functions of sign systems whose self-referentiality allows a process of continual combination, synthesis, and permutation at the heart of the system's symbolic activity. The gods of course are fond of expressing themselves in proverbs and metaphors, but these verbal signs, as I hope the foregoing discussion has demonstrated, obey the laws of a complex rhetoric of religion. If, as we will see in subse quent chapters, the structure of the culturally dominant Lucumi system has given form to other religious and textual systems, Afro-Cuban religion has also accommodated, through transculturation, various supplementary fig ures of centering from other orders and traditions. We will also see how those other orders and traditions have offered alternatives to the rule of the orisha tradition.

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I The OrislKU ii Repakh'cu Cibi But since the bourgeoisie did not rule, since it became a doss ruled by Yankee imperialism, since the weakness of its economic system facilitated the survival of African religious beliefs, they survived to the point of undermining the very religious beliefs of the bourgeoisie. Its Catholicism became "Afro-Catholicism." Walterio Carbonell, "Birth of a National Culture" The anticolonial aspirations of the second Cuban revolution against Spain were cut short by the U.S. intervention in 1898, when Cuba ceased to be a colony of one imperialist power only to become the protectorate of another. The Piatt Amendment, ratified in 1902, accorded the United States the right to send the Marines to safeguard "the preservation of Cuban independence"; the right to ensure "the maintenance of a government adequate for the pro tection of life, property, and individual liberty"; the right to exercise its veto in Cuban pacts or treaties with other international powers; and the right to keep its naval base at Guantanamo. The U.S. occupation of the island had begun soon after its entry in 1898 into the Spanish-American war ("Re member the Maine and to hell with Spain!") and ended in 1902 with the establishment of the new republic under Tomas Estrada Palma, but it would exercise its right to intervene in 1906-9, 1912, and 1917. As Huberman and Sweezy sum up the U.S.-Cuban relations of the time, "[t]he United States did, indeed, have the key to the Cuban house; it did, indeed, enter at will; and the Cuban governments which it supported had, in the nature of the setup, to be run by politicians who could be relied on to do Washington's bidding" (14). At Washington's bidding, the Cuban economy was to become, in effect, the sugar producer for the United States. This imbalanced relationship meant that, although sugar brought prosperity to some Cubans, no truly Cuban national economy existed as such. Cuba's monocultural function, encour-

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Tk Irakis ii RcpiMicii (ita o 1/ aged by increased foreign investment and tariff reductions, was carried out in a highly technologized and rationalized manner, but this progress irratio nally impeded the kind of development of Cuban resources and industries that other parts of Latin America would enjoy in the second quarter of the century. Moreover, the postWorld War I crash in sugar prices would soon allow U.S. investors to take over production on the island, forcing indepen dent farmers to grow sugar for corporate owners. In this period, total U.S. capital investments expanded 700 percent, and already by 1927 some 40 percent of Cuban land was US.-owned or controlled (Barry et al. 269). With Cuba so integrated into the foreign-based economy, US. patronage, for all its progressivism, would in effect add sixty years of neocolonial economic domi nation to the island's four centuries of Spanish colonial rule. That latest chap ter in the island's history of external control concluded with the expropria tion and nationalization, in the early 1960s, of U.S. investments in oil, real estate, sugar-producing properties, hotels, and casinos. It has been said in retrospect that the antagonisms of the 1950s leading up to the Cuban Revo lution were a replay of the tensions that produced the popular anti-Machado movement of the 1930s, which was in great part a movement of resistance to the foreign domination of the economy.l In that earlier period, radical Cuban students and rural and urban prole tarians were engaged in a mass struggle to overthrow the dependent dicta torship, to open up the economy to new industries, to revive a national con sciousness, and to establish national sovereignty. Their political-economic arm was the general strike. Intent on destabilizing a government character ized by its series of U.S.-supported regimes, they took a step toward au tonomy by ousting President Ramon Grau San Martin in 1933, with the ap proval of U.S. Ambassador Sumner Welles, and by pushing the abrogation of the Piatt Amendment to realization in 1934, the year in which the US. Con gress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreement with Cuba. Grau San Martins ouster of course allowed Fulgencio Batista to assume power, first as a politi cal force behind a series of weak presidents, and later, with the overthrow of Carlos Prio Socarras in 1952, as the president himself. Despite the return to dependent dictatorship under Batista, the desire for a national identity and culture that had awakened during the republican era continued on into the period of 1953-59. Curiously, the cultural forms of expression considered characteristic or idiosyncratic of a national identity in the early years of the Republic would frequently be associated with the African pole of the Cuban cultural spec trum. The affirmation of religion-focused Afro-Cuban culture during the in-

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tt o (bipttrTlrtt terwar period involved a turning inward to the authentic sources of la cubanidad, an introspective process of isolating and promoting what appeared, in resistance to the U.S. cultural invasion, uniquely Cuban. The discourse of Afro-Cuban religion thus entered into a process that could be called, after Fanon, the "racialization of thought," for it asserted an ethnic, color-related identity developed in opposition to the Nordic-pragmatic character of the U.S. hegemony, both cultural and economic (Fanon 212). Feeling the pressure of historical change, Afro-Cuban religion nonethe less continued to develop according to its own internal, systemic logic. Cut off from the profane world of the politicalat least in its ritual, mythic, and doctrinal dimensionsthe sign-worlds of that religion constituted them selves in at least momentary insulation from the intrusions of secular institutions. In chapters 1 and 2 I addressed the relative autonomy of an Afro-Cu ban religious culture that literature has reconstructed for a variety of purposes. Considered in their aggregate, the figures of Afro-Cuban religion have always constituted their own space of holy representation, a religious semiosphere populated by its hosts of metaphors and metonymies, organized by its sacred ritual and mythic motifs. At its margins, Afro-Cuban religion continued to reproduce the signs that distinguished this sacred precinct by its difference from the profane outside. Within the religious culture itself, an "interpreted world": the collection of patakis functioned as archive, preserving and orga nizing knowledge. Divination functioned as interpretive paradigm; ritual as social drama; music as a sacred solicitation; possession and dance as lan guages of worship; sacrifice as a metaphorical statement; magic as a principal of metonymic causality. These relatively stabilized religious functions not only provided their discourse community with a totalizing account of the whys and wherefores of human existence, they helped to "explain" the causes and effects of the general economic instability. In Afro-Cuban literature, how ever, a profaning politicization of Afro-Cuban religious discourse became a creative and interpretive option: the postindependence Afro-Cuban narra tives that incorporated elements of religious sign systems frequendy broached politico-economic issues by placing religious discourse in implicit dialogue with the discourses of the reader's historical present. The "Lucumi religious system," which Lachatanere described in the semi nal article discussed in the preceding chapter, amounted to a subcultural dominant inscribed in the Cuban literary-anthropological discourse of the 1930s. For Lachatanere, the field of Afro-Cuban religion was organized by that unifying Lucumi system, a structure-in-process. Both that system and

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The Orhhas ii Repyblican (ibt o n Lachataiiere's 1938 interpretation of it, I would propose, can be read as meta phors of resistance to the pressure of outside forces that threatened to dis solve the community and cultural identity of the Cuban/Afro-Cuban sub ject. In response to that threat, Lachataiiere's theory offered a literary metaphysic founded in opposition to the modernizing rationalization that made Cuba one big sugar plantation within the expanding U.S. economy. Underlying Lachataiiere's theoretical systematizing of Afro-Cuban religion was the awareness that the forces of modernity were threatening the communitarian unity of Cuban society, such as it existed. In the transition to modernity, Gonzalez Echevarria has observed, an im periled communitarian or even communist unity may be replaced by the refashioned unity of syncretic religions. Gonzalez Echevarria illustrates this shift with reference to Severo Sarduy's De donde son los cantantes (Where the sing ers are from, 1967), a novel that places the spotlight on theYoruba-Lucumi stratum of the Afro-Cuban palimpsest: The ad hoc religions of the post-colonial world . arise from the disinte gration of the grand religions, devastated by the advance of the western world, with its science and technology. The defense of those religions, of those cultures, will be the preservation of a type of symbolic activity at the margin of the totalizing claims of the Occident and its historicist religions, such as Hegelianism, Marxism or Progressivism. It has to do with a kind of contingent, local transcendentalism; with the recuperation of histories, of texts, of language, that De donde son los cantantes should resist global inter pretation, and retain something of a preor post-modern symbology (RSS 133) The alternative of a "contingent, local transcendentalism" in an earlier pe riod, however, could run parallel to and supplement the historicist universalisms of the Occident. Afro-Cuban religions, ad hoc religions, are also com plex if supple institutions that made their symbols available to a putative national identity as redefined in literary works. Their worship communities preserved the elements of a shared culture and projected, for the sake of survival, the image of a solidary racial group, an image that could eventually symbolize the nationalist unity and transcendence of a Cuban citizenry. At the same time, the master narrative of a multicultural nation such as Cuba must confront the heterogeneity of its plural symbologies, those of Afro-Cuban religion included. The elements of such symbologies may pro vide the components for constructing a national heritage and identity, but

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M o (kiittrTirtt that kind of construction requires the kind of mediation or translation that forges a more or less unitary national destiny out of the contradictory expe riences of diverse Cuban social groups. The instrument for creating this national culture had to be, to use Frantz Fanon's terms, a "literature of combat," one that "mold[ed] the national con sciousness, giving it form and contours and flinging open before it new and boundless horizons" (Fanon 233, 240). As exemplified repeatedly in AfroCaribbean writing, the molding of a national consciousness in Uterature and other artistic manifestations would not only refuse the definition of the colo nial subject imposed by European culture. It would also give a people, their identity so redefined, an "international dimension," a profile that linked them in solidarity with other postcolonial subjects, all of whom would inaugurate nothing less than a new history of the local, liberated from the universalist Eurocentric narrative. Within a process of literary refunctioning consonant with Fanon's call for an anti-Eurocentric and postcolonial culture, the orisha tradition undergoes what could be called a transformative carnivalization in the Cuban narrative of the first half of the century.2 Lucumi religion takes on new significance in this process of recontextualization: so rewritten, it merges into a discourse of resistance, testimony and validation of the forms of a national community, a "literature of combat." The Burkean-Platonic dialectic that I outlined in the preceding chapterI refer to the movement of signs upward into the sacred order and then back downward, such that they invest the secular and sociopolitical world with divine echoesprovides a schema for the AfroCuban literary act of recodifying religious sign systems into their texts as allegories of a national culture. The Afro-Cuban religious discourse of the 1930s illustrates that dialectic by constructing a multicultural, racialized "dia lectic" of Cuban identity. A brief history of the literary movements known as negrismo, afrocubanismo, and negritudc will clarify the relation of a syncretic religious heritage to a national culture. This discussion will be followed by readings of Lucumi-related narratives of the 1930s by Ale jo Carpentier, Jose Antonio Ramos, and Romulo Lachatanere, the first Afro-Cubanist writers to set forth the terms of a possible postcolonial Cuban identity. Vindications f Af ricaoity The term negrismo names a literary movement that involved all the Hispanic Caribbean artists who incorporated aspects of African-based culture into their works and texts. Beginning as a European vogue, negrismo would come to influence the works of Afro-Dominican, Afro-Puerto Rican, and Afro-Cuban

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The Orishis JR Repoklkii Cibi o fl artists. Negrismo as an international movement was the Hispanic counter part of the Negritude movement that, initiated in Paris with the publication of the journal L'Etudiant Noir in 1932, took root in the Francophone countries of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Senegal, and French Guyana. It will be recalled that the emergence of Afro-Antillean cultures in predominandy "white" Puerto Rico and Cuba (at least for the main part of Cuba's history) was made possible by the annihilation, soon after the Spanish con quest of the islands, of any indigenous population or legacy of cultural arti facts whose presence could have otherwise supplied the basis of a national culture. In the absence of surviving Tainos, Arawaks, and Siboneys, and especially after the advent of North American imperialism in the Caribbean, black-based nodes of expression became available as the privileged vehicle of protest and national self-affirmation, the "authentic alter /native," to use Brathwaite s expression from "The African Presence in Caribbean Literature" (111). In the Cuban context, the Brathwaitean alter/native took the form of a paradoxical, double writing. Representing Afro-Cuban experience and cul ture in Spanish language, and not primarily in Anago, Efik, Congo, or Fon, this double writing constituted an ethnic difference disruptive of the norma tive, colonial modes of narrative understanding, speaking to a Hispanic pub lic and its traditions while celebrating the African otherness within Cuban society. The negrismo movement affirmed an African heritage in opposition to the prejudices of many Cubans who considered that heritage to be a sign of backwardness and source of shame. Jose Antonio Portuondo calls negrismo "the Cuban version of the Ibero-American indigenism and of populist move ments throughout the world." Carpentier s jEcue-Yamba-O! is a specimen of that movement, as are the collections of stories and "black theogonic legends" of Lachataiiere, Cabrera, Ramon Guirao, and the Nanigo stories of Gerardo delValle (BH 61). In these and other authors, the negrista theme takes two main directions: either the historicist approach or what could be called a radicalizing sociological approach. The first looks to the slaveholding past as past and laid to rest, assuming that its problems have been resolved. The second tends to examine the lot of blacks and mulattoes in a contemporary context, denouncing both their victimization by racial prejudice and their common cause with the proletariat under capitalism. Yet, as Bueno has evalu ated it, this denunciation would often fall into the "trap of typicism and the picturesque" (NNH 17, 23). Negrismo, like its French-Antillean equivalent, had found philosophical support in a number of anthropological and historiographical events. In 1910,

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n o (kipttrThrtc Frobenius had published The Black Decameron, based largely on the author's ar chaeological and anthropological researches in Africa. Oswald Spengler ex plained the malaise of Western culture by the theory of the rise and fall of cultures in his Decline of the West, first appearing in 1917. In North America, Vachel Lindsay affirmed the beauty of African-based tradition in The Congo and Other Poems (1914), as did the poetry of Langston Hughes (1902-67), and similar sentiments were expressed in another national context, in Blaise Cendrar s j4nthologie negre (1927). Of the poetry of negritude, which influenced negrismo, it is generally agreed that the Carrier d'un retour aux pays natal (Notebook of a return to the native land, 1939), by the Martinican poet Aime Cesaire, is the seminal work. In that long poem, which has been called a literary ritual of parthenogenesis or self-engendering (Eshleman and Smith 21), Cesaire critiques colonial civi lization and its racism, calling for a new beginning to culture while invoking elemental realities, the "fresh source of light," and the "spark of the sacred fire of the world," in which Afro-Antillean identity would be reborn. Cesaire declares in his Carrier: my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral it takes root in the red flesh of the soil it takes root in the ardent flesh of the sky it breaks through the opaque prostration with its upright patience (Collected 67, 69) In Cesaire and others, negritude expressed the black intellectuals will to build a hybrid sense of identity on a new cultural foundation, out of the motifs of Africa and the language of Mother France. Cesaire in particular rejected the violent rationalism of the white European world as it celebrated the instinctual and intuitive life of African-descended peoples. In response to marginalization and alienation, he proposed a vision of liberation and social justice. Yet Cesaire s negritude falls short of producing a truly liberating nar rative by its exclusive recourse to myth, as Patrick Taylor has cogently argued; that is, it "became a narcissistic contemplation of a contrived self; it reaffirmed the Manichaenism of European racism by romanticizing Africa, glo rifying intuition over reason, and proudly presenting itself as the antithesis of European culture" (163). In the end, by celebrating black intuitionism and irrationalism, Cesaire offered an elitest oversimplification of African cul tures and perpetuated the dualisms that originated in the racism of the colo nizers.

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TbtOrislisiiltoiMkiiCiN o W Unlike the negritude writers, the Hispanic negristas, as Jahn asserts, drew less inspiration from Paris s vogue of Harlem and Africa than from the Ger man "prophets of decline" (History 219). In addition, the negristas seemed more attentive, in their historical and sociological narratives, to the concrete circumstances of black and mulatto characters. Yet like negritude, negrismo combined an African-inspired sense of vitality, naturalness, spontaneity, and exuberance with a radical critique of occidental civilization, whose violent ethnocentrism had sanctioned the institutional practicesslavery and colo nialismthat had made it powerful. What was called the movimiento afrocubano (the Afro-Cuban movement) in fact began as a political program of the black rights organization called the Partido Indcpcndiente dc Color (Colored Independent Party or PIC), led by Evaristo Estenoz and Pedro Ivonet from 1909 to 1913, when Gomez was president. As documented by Fernandez Robaina, those Afro-Cubanists sought to gain equal political treatment for blacks and to protect the rights of racially based political groups like the PIC to meet and organize. Government acts of re pression provoked a failed Afro-Cuban uprising in 1912, in Oriente province, where some three thousand blacks lost their lives (El negro 46-64). With political avenues thus closed off to Cuban blacks, their political aspi rations would at least turn inward, to be translated into artistic and literary self-expression. El afrocubanismo would soon begin to designate an artistic movement that flourished in Cuban literature, dance, music, and plastic arts between 1928 and 1940. In poetic and musical works especially, the makers of the movement characteristically featured the onomatopoeic phrasings, phonetic repetitions, and mythological references known to Afro-Cuban peoples, in poems and lyrics featuring a creolized, Africanized Spanish. The narrative of Afro-Cubanism often reenacted aspects of the ceremonials prac ticed by the descendants of the island's slaves, with sound reiterations emu lating the percussive effects that induced trances in initiates during the typi cal drum-playing parties, the toques de tambor or bembes. This aesthetic emphasis could suggest that the Afro-Cuban movement was not "anti-European or antiChristian" but rather "aim[ed] to stress the magical and telluric values of an urbanized black folklore" (DALC 14). Yet a criticism of the European-im posed colonial culture, with its oppressive forms of Christianity, did become part and parcel of the Afro-Cuban revalorization. Often in opposition to the colonial heritage, the movement evolved into a search for unique cultural roots and national themes, aspiring to produce works that could be claimed by a universal literature (see VU 7-8).

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*4 o (luterTirtt The most celebrated negristas in the Cuba of late 1920s and 1930s were white-skinned writers, with the notable exception of the popular and cel ebrated Nicolas Guillen. What the former saw in the Afro-Cuban presence and often strove to re-create in their poetry, and not without a modicum of persistent ethnocentricity, could be summed up as a cultural primitivity. Many works of Afro-Cuban primitivism appeared for the first time, next to repub lications of European avant-garde works, in the Rcvista dc Avancc (Review of advance) founded in Havana in 1927. The Rcvista s approach to the Afro-Cu ban equated it with a new artistic vitality, spontaneity, and sensuality, some times exalting the sexual appeal of the rumba-dancing mulatta or other stereotypical images. Nicolas Guillen (born 1902), however, avoided the ste reotypes by giving expression to the Afro-Cuban experience in poems writ ten with Afro-Spanish dialect. Guillen recognized the complexity and robust dignity of a culture unknown to many Cuban intellectuals, incorporating elements of the myth and ritual of New World African culture into his poems (see Franco 277-79). Afro-Cuban literature of the republican years thus appeared and gained popularity in a general climate of disillusionment and frustration, participat ing in a general artistic push against the intellectual inertia of the period. Of the literary artists caught up in the effort to revitalize the nation, the early Jose Antonio Ramos belongs to the first generation, associated with lyricism, Americanist aridismo, and nationalist sentiment. Both Alejo Carpentier and an older Ramos belong to the second generation, characterized by a certain antiacademicism and an impulse for nonconformity and innovation that took the black theme as its vehicle of artistic and social revolt (Barreda 117). Romulo Lachataiiere, their contemporary, pioneered the recuperation of the Afro-Cuban oral tradition in his literary writing. In the narratives by Carpentier, Ramos, and Lachatanere to which I now turn, Afro-Cuban religionas social structure, doctrine, slave ideology, mythic archive, transcendencefulfills its diverse vocations as a signifier of otherness in the bosom of Cuban culture, as its nationalist alter/native. At the same time it offers an image of consensus and organic community that negates the conditions of a capitalism dominated by foreign powers and a stratified society dominated by its dependent and disorganized bourgeoisie. All three writers translated texts of the Lucumi religious system into new, literary-aesthetic idioms; in the process, they redefined the Cuban national culture by reopening the question of identity with a notion of difference.

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The Oriditt ii RepiMicu Cibi o M MmmmJm-IaM! Some ten years after Fernando Ortiz published Hampa afrocubana: los ncgros brujos (Afro-Cuban underworld: the black sorcerers), a twenty-three-year-old Alejo Carpentier, in the Havana jail for forty days in 1927, began work on his first novel, the first sustained presentation in Cuban literature of an Afro-Cuban belief system based on Lucumi and Nafiigo elements. Published in 1933, jEcue-Yamba-O! roughly translates as Lord Be Praised!although "Lord" does not quite convey the sense of the central "Ecue," to be discussed in chapter 4. Although the novel focuses on the experiences of Nafiigo characters, experi ences that will be addressed in chapter 4 as well, here I will discuss the novels Lucumi religious elements and the sociopolitical implications of their treat ment for the period in which the novel was first published. With its observa tion of ritual and its collation of doctrinal fragments, ,Ecue-Yamba-0! is full of the "scenarios of transformation" to which Lewis alludes in his study of slave ideology. In presenting those scenarios, a tradition of postcolonial Afro-Cu ban narrative was beginning to create a space for its own unfolding. Carpentier's novel consists of forty-three chapters divided into three ma jor sections entided "Infancy," "Adolescence," and "The City." The episodic chapters are fragmentary, some presenting static portraits of rural labor, games, and customs and all loosely tied to the plot of the life of its protago nist, Menegildo Cue. Menegildo is born into a rural black family around the outbreak of World War I ("There's war there in Uropa"), and the account of his early years are dominated by the family's labor for the sugar factory, the central or ingenio, of the opening descriptions. There is a ritual implication in the cyclical nature of the plot, by which Menegildo, son of a cane laborer, is born, grows up, engenders a child, and dies to be replaced by that child. Brushwood finds in the circularity of jEcue-Yamba-O! a confirmation of Afro-Cuban culture's "durability" and the hold of its pattern not only on the indi vidual but on his or her offspring. Menegildo's child does not escape the continuing cycle of exploitation, poverty, criminality, and violence that fi nally killed his father and could eventually kill him (EYO 36, 102-3). The life of Menegildo Cue and his family is clearly shaped by oppressive circumstances produced by economic rationalizationbut it is also shaped by spiritual impulse and religious custom. At the beginning of the story, Menegildo's grandfather is a slave who was freed when Cuba became a re public in 1902, and Menegildo s father is a small landowner who is forced to sell his parcel for half its worth to the North American monopoly that owns the ingenio. The family as a whole struggles to survive financially despite the

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M o (lipttrTtrtt economic crisis and the hostile environment this has created, which the novel holds responsible for the family's illiteracy and grinding poverty as well as for the racial prejudice under which it suffers. In this marginalized world of underdevelopment and ignorance, the characters seek protection in the warmth of syncretic beliefs and magical practices, especially in those of Afro-Catholic religion. When Menegildo, at the age of three, is bitten by a poison ous crab, the family calls for "Old Berua, doctor of the family for four gen erations," who comes to the house "to 'cast the seashells' and apply three ounces of snake butter on the belly of the child with his calloused hands." Berua goes on to recite a Catholic prayer to the "Just Judge, who would protect him from the persecution of men and beasts of prey" (EYO 42), to complete the cure. Isidro Salzmann finds a religion-reinforced ideological unawareness and passivity in the characters in Carpentier's novel. Whereas Vaudou in Car pentier's subsequent, more mature El reino de estc mundo (The kingdom of this world) will have a heroizing, unifying function for the rebelling slave com munity on Saint Domingue, the religion represented in the earlier novel, argues Salzmann, is shown to foster acquiescence, escapism, and egoistic self-seeking in its believers. The Afro-Cuban religion attributed to the narra tive in this view is but one means for accommodating oneself to, or else fleeing momentarily from, a socioeconomic system that offers no means of advancement through education or employment, a system that makes use of dispossession, prison, and religion itself to contain dissatisfaction. Especially because the novel's action is set in a period just before the sugar crisis of the 1920s, the characters seem like blind victims of an economic fate that de cides their fortune and survival. Menegildo's religion thus provides no more than a means of rechanneling the frustration of disempowered and margin alized characters into "safe" avenues, giving form to an alienation reflected in the lack of any explicit ideological stance in the novel (Salzmann 77, 82). Carpentier's novel indeed reflects on the character's passivity with relation to the sociopolitical order, but rather than equating their religion with mys tification, one could read that religion as a supplement to the ideological vacuum created by their sociopolitical environment. As the narratorial per spective reveals, the situation offers no viable alternatives, but the consola tions and rewards of religious practice provide some symbolic compensation and limited empowerment to the characters as references to this practice help to situate the reader within the narrator's bicultural and antihegemonic outlook. The Cuban interpretation of sociohistorical reality is defamiliarized

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Tke Omhts is RepiMku CiN o W by this shift in viewpoint. Many descriptions in jEcue-Yamba-O! seemed aimed at indoctrinating the reader into a dual perspective, an analytical-magical worldviewboth Afro-Cuban and European and neitherby a process of naming, explaining, categorizing, and analyzing the world in the "AfroCubanist" language. Rather than denounce religion altogether, the narrative assumes a perspective in between, where it questions the adequacy for hu man needs of both the scientific perspective, whose positivistic and progressivist outlook helped to create dependency, and mythical thinking, whose blindness has allowed dependency to continue. Carpentier moreover suggests that Afro-Cuban religion has uses unknown to Western science. In the novel, it provides something more than an avenue of escape or symbolic transcendence to its characters: it offers a kind of verbal-semiotic "medicine" for healing. For in the same prayer that Berua re cites to the Just Judge as part of his treatment for Menegildo s poisoned crab bite, he delivers a poem with the suggestive, psychoactive power to orient the patient toward recovery and to safeguard him against enemies: "I drink their blood and I cleave their heart." The supplicant then affirms his imita tion of Christ by claiming to wear his holy shirt. The Son of God is invoked, as are the holy Gospels and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. A sort of imitative or homeopathic magic operates in the enumeration of the things the suppli cant, speaking for Menegildo, would avoid: prisons, stabbings, "bad tongues" or gossip, animal bites (EYO 43). The reader s apprenticeship in mysteries follows Menegildo s and contin ues with other descriptions of sacred scenes. In presenting a young Menegildo s first view of Berua's altar, for instance, Carpentier lays out a mysterious display of Lucumi signs: "In the center, upon the skin of a low ritual drum, stood Obatala, the crucified, caught in a net of interwoven necklaces. At his feet, Yemaya, little Virgin of Regla, was imprisoned in a glass botde. Chango, under the features of Santa Barbara, second element in the trinity of the major orishas, brandished a golden sabre" (EYO 86). The de scription serves a multiple function. First, the enumeration "fills in" the nar rative with some informative background indexes: these function as meta phors of character, creating the atmosphere of "great things" that overawe Menegildo with their otherworldly aspect and contribute to the definition of his identity. Second, the enumeration underscores Carpentier's favorite theme of cultural mcstizajc, the mixing that brings different cultural forms into juxta position and symbiosis. Third, it verbally reproduces the iconic image whose mystery contributes to "mystifying" Menegildo s consciousness and thus

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it o CbtittrTIm obscuring his knowledge of real social conditions. But fourth, the altar as so described offers a vision of symbolic transcendence in religious allegory a way of reading signs that sees more in them than meets the eye. Other descriptions of artifacts evoke the figural foundations of religious experience. Menegildo*s first narrated encounter with the family altar ap pears in chapter 4, "Iniciacion (a)" (Initiation [a]). On a low table, the in fant Menegildo gazes upon little statues of the saints. The initiated reader may recognize their orisha doubles. They include Babalu-Aye as San Lazaro, "an old man, propped by crutches, followed by two dogs with red tongues"; and Obatala as the Virgin of Mercedes, "[a] crowned woman, dressed in white satin, with a chubby-cheeked boy in her arms." On the same altar Menegildo sees the elekes, "necklaces of green beads," those of Osain, and the sopera tureen with its consecrated stones. The narrator comments: "Magical theater." With this informal "initiation," the reader accompanies Menegildo in meeting the orisha-saints for the first time and also learns that one must keep a respectful distance from the altar when Menegildo s mother tells him to let go of its mantle (EYO 40-42). By reminding us that all of this is "theater" stagecraft, artifice, simulacraCarpentier switches codes to confirm the ana lytical perspective that contradicts and demystifies the experiential narrative. The chapter entided "Mitologia" (Mythology) follows on the episode cov ering another session of "therapy" with Berua, this time for knife wounds. Recuperating, Menegildo has recourse to pray to San lizaro-Babalu-Aye, the saint who heals with a glass moved in a sign of the cross and with a snakeskin belt, who speaks through a cast of the cowries. Menegildo s free indirect discourse then shifts into the second person to address the orisha-saints di rectly: "Christ, nailed and thirsty, you are Obatala, god and goddess in one body, and you animate everything, who spreads out the canopy of stars and carries the cloud to the river"; and to theVirgen de la Caridad del Cobre he mentions the three Juans who discovered her in the Bay of Nipe and the protection she promised to those who believe in her power (EYO 104, 1 OS). These narrated recollections and appellations thus immerse the reader in a world of African mythic thought and the Afro-Cuban synthesis discussed in chapter 1 of this study. The abbreviated retelling of myth in Carpentier s pas sage expresses Menegildo s belief as it reflects on the uses of myth and mys tification in an unconscious process, where mind and body, through a lan guage of wonder, may work together to heal Menegildo's wounds. Elsewhere, alternative and alternating discourses, either liturgical or ana lytical, emerge from a chaotic background. On the side of mystery, a passage describes a sacred Nochebuena, or Christmas Eve, celebration. The drummers

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The Orisbis ii Repiklicfi (iN o M "profane" sacred songs, other members of Menegildo's potencia or Nanigo association dance in rings moving in contrary directions, and all sing in uni son the repetitive chant, "Oldi, / Olcld. / Olcli, / Olcld. / Oldi, / Oldd. / Oldi, / Olcld."The Nanigos mix Lucumi, Efik, and Efor ritual with spiritualist calls to "transmitters" that include Jesus Christ, Santa Barbara, Allan Kardek, and Yemaya. A circle is drawn and a bottle is placed in the center, as the circle's "axis"; in the midst of rhythmic corybantic dancing, the saint "arrives" and old Cristalina is possessed: "she writhed on the ground, with her eyes open and her mouth full of foam." The drums are silenced, and she is taken to another room, where, transmitting advice in consultations given by the saint, "[s]he was a skylight open to the mysteries of the other world" (EYO 177, 178, 179). Earlier in the novel, Carpentier allowed a different voice, the voice of analysis, to explain the mystery of possession. After relating one episode of pos session there, the narrator steps back to reflect on what has just occurred: "It is possible that, in reality, the saint never talks; but the deep exaltation pro duced by an absolute faith in his presence ends up endowing the word with its magical creative power, lost since the primitive eras. The word, ritual in itself, then reflects a proximate future that the senses have already perceived, but which reason still gets a hold of in order to control it better" (EYO 67). In this passage of scientific explanation or cant, the narrative voice makes use of the subjunctive "hable" after the phrase "Es posible que" as it searches for a term to name a creative-prophetic power of the word that is as yet "mo nopolized" or "caped over" (as in acapara) by reason. For there are other ways of knowing, there is more to the real than the rational, and the word, called "ritual en si misma" or "ritual in itself," follows a logic that reason does not govern. Speaking of "occult forces" issuing from another world, the double-visioned, double-voiced narrator later comments on how the space between humans and between objects and humans carries the magical, but more pow erful, equivalent of radio waves: "A wooden doll, baptized with Menegildo's name, becomes the master of his living double. If there are enemies who sink a rusty tack into the side of the figure, the man will receive the wound in his own flesh. Four hairs of a woman, duly worked some leagues from her hut. . can infallibly tie her to a bed. The jealous female succeeds in assuring the happiness of her lover by correcdy employing the water of his intimate ablutions." In these measures for securing power over others we recognize prac tices belonging to Frazers categories of imitative magic and contagious magic. The baptized doll numerically represents the man, as does the metonymically

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IN o (kipttfTkru related name; the four hairs represent the desired woman by synecdoche, as a part symbolizing the whole.The narrator continues to explain: a gold chain contracts as a sign of danger. Why? "If one accepts as unquestionable truth that an object can be endowed with life, that object will live" (EYO 66, 67). If one accepts the premise, one accepts a personification involved in the magi cal attribution, as well as the metaphoric mimesis by which a contracting chain makes a gesture of cowering or "shrinking" in the anticipation of harm. Similar magical mechanisms go into the making of a love charm through the enamoramiento or love-securing ritual in the chapter entitled "El embo" (or ebbo, charm or sacrifice). Menegildo, wishing to win Longina s love, arrives at Berua s hut with a piece of cloth from Longina's dress. To carry out the embo, the brujo would work with the "victim's" name, but Menegildo has only just met Longina and does not know it at this point. Berua nonethe less goes on with the ceremony, ensuring that the saints are "fed" with aguardiente (cane liquor), yam fritters, cornmeal balls, and a metal heart and hand, all provided by Menegildo. The ritual involves six steps that the narrative represents in sequence. Carpentier devotes all of chapter 19 (EYO 83-89) to this ritual. The steps for creating an amarrc or "tying" love charm for Menegildo include the fol lowing: the limpieza or cleansing, done by anointing the client with palm oil and casting toasted corn on his back; the invocation; the interrogation regarding the birthplaces of the client's father ("Luis's farm") and the saint ("Guinea"); the call-and-response exchange repeating the information of the interrogation and invoking the name of the one who ties; and the tying of the cloth with hemp into seven knots, during which Berua calls out in anaphoric incantation: With one I tie you. With two as well. With three Mama-Lola [Ochun]. With four you fall down. With five you get burned. With six you stay. With seven, tied you are! After step 7, Menegildo buries the knots in the shade of an aromatic myrrh as Berua recites the prayer to the Anima Sola, thus appeasing the Lonely Soul in Pain (EYO 88-89). The magic apparendy works when, in the next chapter, Longina surren ders herself to Menegildo (EYO 92). How to explain it? A certain post hoc, ergo

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Tke Orisbis to RenMicii Cita o III propter hoc logic works in both Berua s magic and the narrative structure. The ceremony's invocation of supernatural agents, its repetitions, and its rehearsal of the effects intended for Longina produce the attitude of expectancy and confidence in Menegildo conducive to precipitating an amorous union with the beloved. We again recognize a combination of a contagious magic in making the charm with a piece of the victim's clothing and an imitative magic in the knot-tying ceremony and chants. On the level of the story, we know that the charm works simply because the narration tells us it works, and the magic effect can confirm this tautology. Myth serves an explanatory function in the novel outside the context of religious ceremonies as well. In "Tempestad (b)" (Storm [b]) (EYO 55-57), as the Cue family takes refuge from the familiar tropical hurricane, the whole catastrophe becomes an event with a special Afro-Cuban significance, and so the narration takes on a magical quality. The storm manifests the presence of Chango and turns into a pan-Caribbean affair: "Santa Barbara and her ten thousand horses with bronze hoofs gallop over a rosary of unprotected islands." Unexpected symbolism occurs spontaneously: "The coffin of a child navigates along the street of Souls"; a sign for CIGARROS [cigars] gradually loses letters until it seems to read "CI ... C LO." Such occurrences betoken lo real maravilloso, or Carpentier's notion of "the marvelous real," because they serve as portents within the Afro-Cuban sign-universe, in which nothing is purely accident and everything signifies (see Carpentier, Tientos 132). Despite the misgivings on the part of critics and Carpentier himself about the execution of the novel (see Sommers 234; EYO 26), we should give it its due by acknowledging its achievement in incorporating Afro-Cuban religious elements into an avant-garde pastiche that, modeled in part on Dadaism and Futurism, strove to depict a many sided or fragmented reality while foregrounding the side of lived myth. The narrative creates the impression in the reader's mind that Cuban culture itself after the 1920s, during the early years of the Republic, was an analogous collage of heterogeneous and at times contradictory voices. From a double perspective, one which the Ibeyi twins no doubt would approve, Carpentier did not simply portray the vivencias or experiences of Menegildo's race and class but attempted to explain that group's collective representations, out of which an Afro-Cuban world that negated the sociopolitical world of the Cuban present was created. jEcue-Yamba-O! deserves the credit for recovering in one presentation both the authoritative voice of Afro-Cuban experience, which recalls Guirao and Guillen, and the authoritative voice of sociological analysis, which recalls Ortiz and Jorge Manach. Seen from both angles, the narrative takes on the

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Ill o (kipttfllrtt semiotic reading of religious signs as both creative and interpretive venture. The metanarrative comment on the novel's metareligious activity can be found in chapter 38, entided "Niiios" (Children), in which a gang of street boys form a club in a room they call "the Cave of Crabs." In this improvised sanctum, the boys are said to "worship" a print from a French magazine of a naked woman. The narrator underscores the cultish quality of this reverence: "The image came to satisfy a need for religious fervor in them. No one dared to pronounce bad words or urinate in her presence" (EYO 160) .Whereas the passage may seem like a digression in a chaos full of digressions, it textually reflects the motives and activities involved in group formation as it mirrors, albeit in desublimated and degraded miniature, the impulse to avail oneself of religion's expressive and instrumental means. Carpentier's novel emphasizes the social and semiotic dimensions of Afro-Cuban religion with out, for the moment, elaborating their implications for political praxis, leav ing that task to his own later works and to those of other authors such as Jose Antonio Ramos. IirritiK(iiimDi|( Ramos's Caniqui (1936) is a pluridimensional realist narrative, one that recontextualizes African-based myth within a multifaceted critique of Cuban colonial and neocolonial social structures. The novel represents events set in Trinidad, Cuba, in 1830 and so makes allegorical use of colonial history for figuring the Cuban condition of the mid-1930s. The narrative of Caniqui em ploys Afro-Cuban religion as a mark of character, as an alter/native mode of interpreting experience, and as a symbol for the multiethnic Cuban national identity, as well as a defamiliarizing frame of reference for understanding social reality. With its many references to Afro-Cuban myth and ritual, the novel's allegorical reading of a neocolonial situation through a family chron icle set in colonial times bears out Cuervo Hewitt's assessment that Cuban literature consists of "polysemic" and "peregrine discourses" in which the drift of history rather than Cartesian rationality governs the production and displacement of signifiers within a dialogics of national culture and national identity (APA 27). By examining the function of Afro-Cuban religion in Caniqui, one sees how the drift of history carries that system of belief and practice toward a conception of new political possibilities. Caniqui's predecessor is the antislavery novel Sab by the Cuban novelist Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, first published in 1844. The action of Sab centers on the love of a slave for his white mistress. This idealized and ill-fated love contrasts favorably with that of Enrique, the novel's avaricious white slave

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The Orishis ii Refiklkii CiN o IN owner, and serves to exemplify, in nineteenth-century Rousseauistic fashion, the greater nobility and morality of the black slave. For Castellanos and Castellanos, the "philanthropic humanism" of Gomez de Avellaneda s novel puts to shame the "deformed and feeble Christianity that was practiced on the Island" (CA 1:307). Slavery and abolitionism were no longer current political issues in the early years of the Republic, but they served as metaphors for the contempo rary political situation in narratives such as Lino Novas Calvo's Pedro Blanco, cl negrero (Pedro Blanco, the slaver, 1933), which uses the history of the past to remark upon and critique the history of the present. In Ramos's novels and treatises, a certain bitterness over the political decadence of the period leads to a search for alternative cultural origins, and such is the case in Caniqui. As William Luis writes in Literary Bondage, "Caniqui's message is a contemporary call for rebellion, a rebellion that will emancipate not only blacks but the entire society. With Caniqui, we discern how the passage of time has allowed the incorporation of a discourse of rebellion that was present in the nine teenth century, as represented, for example, by Jose Antonio Aponte and later David Turnbull but not included in the early novels of the slavery period." The "discourse of rebellion" that sustained abolitionism will lend its force to a discourse of anti-imperialist nationalism. Caniqui's "counter-discourse of power" also adds the text of Afro-Cubanism to that anti-imperialist appeal (LB 8-9). The full name of the novel's protagonist is Filomeno Bicunia Caniqui, slave of the hacendado or hacienda owner don Lorenzo de Pablos. Caniqui's constant obsession is to escapehacerse cimarron, to become a runawaywhich he does repeatedly. At one point, when he has been recaptured, he defiandy tells his master, "Tie me up, master or put me in the stocks, . because if not, I'll run away" (Ramos 76).The plot largely hangs on Caniqui's attempts to escape, the last of which ends in his death by the guns of the posse. The narrative also includes the conspicuous subplot of the intrigue surround ing the character Mariceli, don Lorenzo's pious daughter. Obsessed with ex piating her sins, Mariceli first strives to become a nun, but when this plan is blocked, she delivers herself to a nighdy regimen of self-mortification. Caniqui witnesses one session of flagellation that nearly takes Mariceli's life, and his mysterious complicity in covering up her actions with her thereafter becomes the obscure center around which the subplot revolves. Juan Anto nio Luna, the proindependentist and abolitionist lawyer in love with Mariceli, gets caught up in the mystery surrounding his beloved's relationship with the runaway slave. He seeks her love, but she seeks forgiveness; Caniqui seeks

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114 o CktpterThrec his freedom, and don Lorenzo alternately pursues his slave and ever greater riches and power. The events of the novel thus stage various scenarios of desire played out some thirty-eight years before the first wars of independence. The novel itself, first published in the era of economic dependency, of the choteo (mock ing humor), demagoguery, corruption, and the relaxation of morals, ad dresses the present need for emancipation from the new forms of "slavery" that had oppressed the island and stunted its political and economic growth. Although a slave, Caniqui, the narrative makes clear, is an individual with a uniquely Cuban history. The narration makes this point by recalling his mischievousness as a child and his African-Chinese ancestry. This last quality marks Caniqui as an authentic representative of Cuba's mixed ethnic origins, combining the blood of the two major laboring groups brought to the island in large numbers during the nineteenth century: the African slaves and the Chinese indentured servants. Unlike the passive slaves of abolitionist novels, Caniqui is a restless, vigorous hero who makes a deep impression on the Pablos family and other characters (Barreda 129-31). Cuervo Hewitt points out that Caniqui's Hispanic name itself anticipates the appearance of another slave character of the same name in Cuban literature. Appearing in Carpentier's Concierto barroco (Baroque concert, 1974), that character is the music-playing Filomeno, a descendant of the first black hero of Cuban litera ture, who appeared in Silvestre de Balboa's Espejo de pacicncia (Mirror of pa tience) in 1608 (APA 229-30). Ma Irene is Caniqui's maternal great-grandmother and an iyalorisha. In her role as diviner, she has told her great-grandson the secret of his birth and destiny: "Elegbarathe great god, vindictive and powerfulwas angry since his, Caniqui's, birth, because Calixtadaughter of a Mandinga princess had listened to a man of another race: a Chinese. That was the history of his parents. And so much so, that Bian, the black god of smallpox, had finished them both off immediately after his arrival to the world" (Ramos 161). The references are vague or confuted, but it seems that the miscegenation com mitted by Calixta and the Chinese man brought on the "justice" of the en forcer Elegbara and punishment dispensed by Bian, more commonly known as Chankpana or Babalu-Aye. By his crossed lineage and his own defiance, Filomeno Bicunia Caniqui symbolizes a multicultural and oppressed Cuba with a mystical bent. Seeing themselves reflected in Caniqui's otherness, Juan Antonio and Mariceli may grasp the extent of their own servitude to the codes and rules of their colo-

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TleOristaiiKeHMkuCikf IK nial society and then evolve their own forms of resistance to its authority: "To liberate themselves, they will find an example and strength in Caniqui. The slave is the inspiration that extricates them from the terrible circum stances in which they find themselves" (Barreda 133). A close reading can establish that the strength of the exemplar derives largely from resources of religion. The narrator of the novel tells us early on that Caniqui's great-grandmother was Mariceli s black nursemaid; by her nurturing presence as well as by her religious instruction, ma Irene has taught Mariceli to abhor the cruelty of slavery, most visible when her father's slaves are humiliated in the stocks or lashed in the tumbadcro, a clearing or yard reserved for such torments. The nursemaid's influence explains in part Mariceli's desire to see her father pun ish the runaway Caniqui with leniency, and her sympathy will win her over to the cause of Cuban abolition. The narrator tells us that the nursemaid "had inculcated in her since childhood a certain absurd notion of heaven and hell. The 'bad' whites, according to ma Irene, suffered after death the same pun ishments that the blacks had received in life. The latter, in the end, were so [i.e., black] because of their sins, or those of their parents. And if they were good in life, they became white as they rose up to heaven."The passage refers to the belief held by many Lucumis that all humans return to life after they die and that "sin" or its equivalent is punishable by the assignment to a low station in life, such as that of the black slave subjected to a white master. Much later, ma Irene suffers a sickness from which she is thought to die, and yet she miraculously recovers; with her near death and rebirth, ma Irene becomes a symbol of a reborn Cuba that has vindicated the Africanity in its own bosom (Ramos 50, 273). Due to the conflicting ideological pressures that bear upon Mariceli's tor tured psyche, this becomes the site where doctrines and discourses compete for dominance. In addition to alluding to ma Irene's Afro-Cuban teachings, and in proximity both to don Lorenzo's pontificating on the greater good of the slaveholding institution and to Juan Antonio's denunciations of the colo nial subjugation, the narrative explicitly cites works of sacred and mystical poetry of the Golden Age, especially that of Fray Luis de Leon, San Juan de la Cruz, and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Apart from Mariceli's own Afro-Catholic formation, other religious doc trines and dogma from various traditions meet, contradict, and entangle each other in Ramos's anxious narrative. The epigraph of chapter 3, for instance, is identified as a passage from The Chariot of Clay, a Hindu drama attributed to

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IK o (interllrec Prince Zudraka, second century A.D. In that epigraph, a slave named Estavaraka declares, echoing the previously introduced notion of reincarnation: "The gods have already punished me with slavery for the faults of a previous life; I do not want to risk being punished again by being reborn a slave." A differ ent reUgious tradition is recalled in a later description of the hills and valleys surrounding the Pablos family's sugar mill. The narrator, focused on Juan Antonio's thoughts, mentions that "Close to the Solitario, on very white foam, a black and rotund Buddha was setded."This landscape speaks of "a prehu man and inconceivable God, equally indifferent to all the beings of that pen etrating and impenetrable nature, without any relation to the mystical allega tion of his cousin" (Ramos 58, 61). The attitude of Buddhistic calm seems removed from the turbulent drama of the novel's characters, but the passage prefigures the pantheistic mood of Caniqui's personal form of worship, soon to be revealed. Texts of other reUgious and philosophical traditions are cited and interwoven into the narrative: those of African myth, the Bible, Enlight enment encyclopedism, French vitalism, the poetry of Heredia, and, again, the Afro-Cuban discourse of syncretic reUgion and negrismo. Although the polyphony of religious texts in the novel does not point to any simpUstic relativism or tolerance with respect to religious faith, the novel argues negatively for a dominant viewpoint that is critical of Christianity, implying that it, rather than African-based worship, is the Ufe-denying slave reUgion. The specific target of critique is the kind of conventional, compla cent brand of Christianity that, practiced by the majority of Cuban colonists, sanctioned the institution of slavery. By contrast, the kind of Christianity that MariceU reads about in the Leyenda dorada (The golden legend), for instance, with its history of saints and martyrdoms, provides a model of a more "he roic" and otherworldly self-sacrifice incompatible with worldly existence (Ramos 123-24). By giving herself over to reUgious fervor, MariceU virtually rejects the or der of her plantation-owning father once she realizes the priestly complicity of the father-confessor with her own father in discouraging her attempts to become a nun. In effect, in choosing to live in accord with her ideal, she resists "the satanic power of her father and of the men like him." Her violent antipathy against the patriarch only intensifies when she learns of his machi nations in the sinking of a competitor's ship, loaded with slaves (Ramos 122, 226). Her self-torment thus symbolizes an attempt to expiate the paternalinstitutional crime of slavery, which is shown to epitomize the collective sin of one race's domination of another. Ramos thus elaborates what could be called a Nietzschean critique of

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Tie Indus hRenNkii (ill o ill Christian morality That critique, as I have suggested, works a curious inversion: Christianity is presented as the "slave morality" that militates against the needs and interests of life, whereas the slaves' morality appears as that which promotes a free and ascendant life. As defined or figured by patriar chy, "woman" symbolizes and thus sublimates the subjugation, passivity, and weakness prescribed by Christian morality. Nietzsche indeed asserts in The Will to Power, with perhaps only metaphorical misogyny, that woman "needs a religion of weakness that glorifies being weak, loving, and being humble as divine: or better, she makes the strong weakshe rules when she succeeds in overcoming the strong." Mariceli's masochistic practice, although implic itly critical of the colonizers' Catholicism, expresses an extreme of the same kind of weakness made into virtue. On the other hand, the African-based religion practiced by Caniqui is an empowering, celebratory, physical-spiri tual faith affirming a personal communion with the natural world inhabited by the orishas. That religion symbolizes an alternative vision of the national destiny as well. Like Ramos afterward, Nietzsche "declared war on the ane mic Christian ideal. . not with the aim of destroying it but only of putting an end to its tyranny and clearing the way for new ideals, for more robust ideals" (Nietzsche, Will 460, 197). Inasmuch as Christian ideals devalorized the will and favored personal and collective disempowerment, Caniqui s situation Cuba's situationcalled for a new credo of strength, pride, and self-deter mination: more robust ideals. At various moments, the novel broaches the topic of a repressed sexual element inherent to religious fanaticism, bringing the debate over Cuban nationalism into the Freudian libidinal arena. In discussing with dona Celia her plans to turn her own nursery into a private chapel, "Mariceli remem bered an insignificant fact, perhaps already forgotten by her mother. . The year before some pairs of dogs had been enclosed there, to what purpose she didn't properly know." The recollection comes near the end of chapter 5, "Solitudes," and remains unexplained, but the recollection is juxtaposed with Mariceli's expression of intent to use the chapel for acts of penitence. Mariceli also dreams one night that the young Roman martyr of one of her litho graphs is embracing her. In the same dream-scene, a tiger positions itself to devour Mariceli and Caniqui, and then the slave offers her a hairshirt of mor tification. A mob of slaves is shouting around them, but she hears nothing. Mariceli thus unconsciously identifies herself with the victims and martyrs of her dream, associating them with images of desire and death. Later on, in the chapter entitled "Camino de Perfection" (Road to perfection), we read a mix of religious and sexual signs in learning that Mariceli "[p]laced her candle

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IN o (kuterTtrct on the altar and began to remove the melted sperm [esperma] from her fingers" (Ramos 119, 134, 148). The narrative gradually brings bits and pieces of the mystery surrounding this strange devotion to light. Caniqui has hidden the blouse that Mariceli bloodied during her rounds of self-flagellation. We also learn that Caniqui brought the blouse to the taita for him to make a resguardo or protective charm with it, consistent with the apotropaic logic of a Congo magic that wards off evil. We sense, however, that there exists a secret beyond the secret that Caniqui protects. The scant clues suggest a transgression committed and left unspoken. Could the secret, we ask, be a sexual encounter between the slave and his white mistress? The narrative does not dispel this indeterminacy, but a weary Mariceli, after kneeling for hours in her flagellation chamber before the crucified Christ, reflects on the weakness of the flesh as the narrator s voice blends once again with hers: Perhaps in her ultimate yearnings were mixed abominable desires, unex tinguished ember of that surrender to the Incubus, on her first night in the chapel! It was better that she find that ember cold, the sinister power of the Incubus exorcised. Caniqui was innocent. And her only desire, now, was that of purging her sins of pride and rebelliousness before the designs of the omniscient power in snatching her mother away from her, the ne glect of her faith for so much time, the forgetting of the pristine impulses of her heart: and of the non-fulfillment of her promises. So that the spec ter of the unhappy slave, delivered by her to the dark powers, could return to the bosom of God as if to bring peace to her mother's soul, she had to carry out her expiatory penance. (Ramos 285-86) Caniqui thus acquires spectral dimensions in Mariceli's mind to the extent that he himself has become "El Incubo."The narrator reports the rumor run ning through Trinidad: the slave keeps her "under his satanic power by means of a spell, according to some, or by means of some vital secret, which the less credulous affirm." Caniqui and Mariceli's dark secret thus forms the novel's center of mystery and motivates the pining Jose Antonio to seek the truth of their relationship (Ramos 281, 291, 296). The incubus that is Caniqufs ghosdy presence, symbolizing the African difference that his per spective introduces into the nationalist dialogue, in effect doubles the text of the narrative as it opens up an alternative reading of Cuban history from the runaway's point of view. In the novel's first extended discussion of Caniqui s beliefs, the narration signals the insistence of African religious figures in the slave's thinking, de-

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The Urisfeis ie RepiMicu Ciki o II) spite the overlay of Christian symbols and precepts in his consciousness and even despite Caniqui's "mature" skepticism toward African religion. One re vealing passage sums up the process of empowering syncretism by which Caniqui has reinterpreted Christianity andYoruba religion within a dual sys tem of correspondences and differences. Cognizant of incongruities between symbologies, this syncretism produces not syntheses, as would be the case in complete identifications, but heterogeneous combinations or juxtapositions: "Before Christ on his crosssympathetic symbol for his imagination peopled with analogous tortures inflicted upon the elders of his race Obatala had given him the sensation of his infinite power. Truly, God the Father, of whom Rosario had spoken to him, could well be Obatala. By his order, the terrifying Changogod of thunderhad made him cry with the dazzling brilliance of his flash, his frightening noise and his fire, which killed blacks and burned trees and houses. That, surely, could not be the work of the poor crucified Christ." As this reference to Chango illustrates, Caniqui finds that the orishas, more than the God and saints of Catholicism, provide a satisfying ratio explaining natural phenomena in supernatural terms. In Caniqui's memory, Biri once extinguished the sun; Orumila brought "an in tense happiness" one tropical morning during Caniqui's time in the palenque or settlement of runaway slaves, or cimarrones (Ramos 160). It is in his heroic personal history, moreover, that Caniqui himself will fulfill the re quirements of an Obatala-Christ figure whose example will symbolize the way to redemption. Such syncretisms and their explanation further illustrate the manner in which African-based religion is compared to its advantage in the novel with the other religions. Not only do its animism and cult of nature expand the individual's sense of self, but its secret languages of myth and ritual bind their speakers into a community of like-minded worshipersunlike the West ern religions of interiority that seem to isolate the individual in a private relationship with God. Whereas Caniqui is more often than not depicted as a lone individualist, descriptions of Afro-Cuban celebrations in the narrative nonetheless indicate their function as forms of ethnic self-identification and symbols of solidarity. During the Epiphany carnival in Trinidad, for instance, "[t]he iron-like collective identity imposed by the whites, with its distorted Christianization, broke itself one more time upon the diverse origins and social categories of faraway Africa. Each one felt something more than black and slave. The Congo, the Mandinga, the Carabali remembered or discovered precarious differences with which to feed his elemental human yearning for individuation" (Ramos 217). While the carnival provides a release valve for

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Ill o (liittrftrtt pent-up energies, it also strengthens, by a process of collective individuation, the latent ties of community across the boundaries of distinct African ethnicities. African tradition is tolerated by the whites and embraced by the blacks in the same event. In addition to forging a sense of identity and ethnic belonging in Caniqui, African-based religion strengthens his will to defy the whites hacendados and slavers. The orishas, appearing ubiquitously in Caniqui s sign-world, are not only the life of nature but the guides of the spirit. To Caniqui's mind, their existence and immanence is not just a question of faith and under standing but of feeling and intuition: "Amidst the mysterious concavities of the hills,... as in the enormous treetops of the ancient ceibas, in the fire, in the rain, in the fruits of the earth and in the flowerswhich constantly shook their spirits in intense emotionsFilomeno refused to concede that there was no benevolent and protective orisha, the way that in his early youth he had felt it on his own account, before learning it through the traditions of his race." Despite Caniqui's skepticism and Christian indoctrination, orisha wor ship offers assurance, especially in moments of solitude or despair. In the forest, Caniqui knows that the gods dwell in the sacred ceiba, and that Elegbara opens the paths that lead away from his oppressors; on the sea shore, he feels the presence of Olokun and bathes in the exhilaration of free dom. Caniqui's form of worship is indeed not a question of believing dogma, as Barreda observes, but of experiencing the "forces of the universe" (Ramos 160;Barreda 134). And despite his disbelief in other aspects of orisha worship, Caniqui has no doubt whatsoever that Olokun assists him, having helped him to swim away and escape from his master and the other pursuers. With Olokun's pro tection, "the sea was his element," and it gave him "an unspeakable happiness" to dive in the water, where no harm would befall him (Ramos 162). Cuervo Hewitt has noted the confidence of Caniqui in Olokun, his protect ing orisha, despite the threat posed by the destiny-turner Elegbara. It could be added that Caniqui's faith in the sea god reflects the Cuban identification with the ambisexual Yemaya-Olokun: "Pursued by the whites, the slave Filomeno (Caniqui) reaches the place that he considered the nest of his pro tection, as if he arrived to a maternal bed: the blue, infinite sea of YemayaOlokun." Olokun's syncretization with the patron saint of the Bahia de La Habana, the Virgin of Regla, further places Caniqui at the heart of the evolv ing Cuban national identity in this recasting of Cuban history from the AfroCuban viewpoint (APA 134, 165).This water symbolism not only confirms

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The Orishis ii RcpiklkiR (ibi III Caniqui s identification with the water god but also foreshadows the end of his life in a mountain lake, where, cornered and shot by the posse, he will be reunited with Olokun and the natural world. Caniqui's communication with the orishas, as suggested earlier, becomes a sort of animistic nature worship in Ramos's text, especially evident when Caniqui arrives at Olokun's sea, but also when the author refers, erroneously by most lights, to Biri as the moon and to Orumibila as the sun. A sunrise is described in the following unusual terms: "on the rigid horizon of the waters, magnificent Onimila [normally considered the god of Ifa] began to cast upward the blood of his agonizing enemy, to come up later, gentle and serene, in the luminous and lightening blue of the sky." In Ramos's erroneous reading of West African mythology, the orisha names of natural phenomena mark those phenomena as allies in Caniqui's quest for liberation, for although Caniqui is said not to believe wholeheartedly in the orishas, he worships the personal and impersonal forces they personify and symbolize. To do so is his second nature. Caniqui will save enough from his salary to purchase his coartacion or manumission and not feel the temptation (comezon or impulso), inspired by Elegbara, to escape to the forest once again. Here Elegbara ap pears as the sometimes malicious Eshu, whom Caniqui blames for making him see an undressed Mariceli and because of whom he must undergo a limpid, otherwise known as limpieza, or ritual cleansing. Caniqui also carries his resguardos or magic safeguards against Elegbara: a piece of iron, cayajabos or jack beans, and a written prayer to the Just Judge (Ramos 1 58-59, 186-87). Other characters appearing in Caniqui indicate other Afro-Cuban codes of conduct that come to bear on the protagonist's attitude toward his masters and his bondage. The taita ("father") Jose Maria, a one-hundred-year-old plantation slave, functions as a helper who aids and instructs Caniqui. After the slave sees his unclad mistress during one of her ritual flagellations, he goes, deeply disturbed, to seek Jose Maria's advice. The taita gives him counsel, which in fact refers to the precedent of one "negro spiritualist" named Jose GabrielTrelles, who had committed a similar transgression. Because he had seen a white woman "ejnua" (desnuda, naked), Jose Gabriel suffered from an embo that led him to be lynched outside the gate of the village, his body left to feed the vultures. In sum, says the taita, "Naked white woman, even in dreams, was the perdition of a slave" (Ramos 163). Cuervo Hewitt finds in the passage the "transculturation of a concept" related to African divination, for the taita applies a moral lesson from a past precedent to a future action.

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Ill o ClipttrTIm Here, the "pataki" is not African myth but an historical antecedent that "now comes to determine the repetition of the narrative denouement" (APA 68-69, 83). While consulting with Jose Maria, Caniqui recalls the precedent of yet another slave named El Chino, whom the taita had accompanied for a read ing of the diloggiin oracle. On that occasion, the cowries advised El Chino to flee from a certain woman who would otherwise bring him disaster. El Chino s response was to cut her throat and flee, never to be heard from again. To avert the same disaster, Jose Maria gives Caniqui the instructions for pro ducing the embomade of Mariceli s undergarment, corn, and, later, nails that will rid him of his curse or sakcion. As it turns out, the prcnda or article of clothing that Caniqui obtains for making his safeguard will be Mariceli's blood-stained blouse, taken from the house servant Rosario, to whom it was given for cleaning. That theft will be reported by the envious domestic slave Domingo, who betrays his rival to the owner and overseers (Ramos 164, 166, 174). Caniqui's eventual self-surrender to the posse led by Captain Armona re capitulates, in a language of gesture peculiar to Ramos's text, the Cimarron's attitude toward nature, death, and life beyond it. Floating face upward in the waters of Olokun, the narrator tells us, "He kept immobile, his arms open, upon the soft bed of the calm waves, as if he heard the voice of a mother in the air, rocking his reverie: mother nature, his only one, like him a slave of the whites and like him rebellious, confident, laughing, . Blue! Magnifi cent Obatala! Freedom! in the width and breadth of space: in the air, in the sea! Freedom, expanse" (Ramos 317). Although the passage once again misidentifies Obatala, whose color is normally white, with the blue of the sky, it anticipates the dispersion of Caniqui s mind and body into the free dom of a liberated nature, into the expanse of a space unfettered by irons and the religion of the slave owners. In death he will meet the maternalpaternal embrace of the re-engendered Obatala, syncretized with the cruci fied Christ of Catholicism and merged with the indwelling spirit of creation. In the face of death, Caniqui s orisha-worship thus liberates and affirms life, exalts in the beauty of the natural world, celebrates sensuality, and ennobles the individual as it consecrates his example for a community of believers. Mariceli's silence at the end of the novel, after Caniqui's death, mirrors "the eternity [lo ctcrno] of the night," a night that serves as the endless ground of peregrine discourses that must collide or collude with one another along the drift of history. As Mariceli tells Jose Antonio during their last reported exchange, the final dialogue of the novel: "He was a hardened runaway. He

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Tie Orjshis ii Repikikao Ciba o II) loved freedom above all things. It was his religion." (Ramos 332, 327). Which is to say not only that freedom was Caniqui's religion in a metaphorical sense, but that in practicing his neo-African religion in defiance of the Spanish mas ters Caniqui attained a circumscribed measure of freedom. A Foundational Folklore: liKlitiiitre's Mythic System Myth supplements history in proposing figures of the self, images of com munity, and even alternative ways of narrating that history. As a compilation of stories of explanatory power for the speaking community, a mythology keeps alive a cultural unconscious, a collection of archetypes. Seen with the family of narratives, and as differentiated from history, myth exhibits the mode of literary "abstraction" placed at the extreme opposite end of a scale at whose other end we find realist verisimilitude. Caniqui, as a historical novel whose characters engage in myth telling and myth making, explores the way in which the flesh-and-blood slave is transformed into a symbol of the rebel lious subject and the forerunner of a new kind of community. In other narra tives of the period, however, mythic tales of gods, removed from more historicizing contexts, depict them as beings insured against all contingency, finitude, and doubt. In the narrated exploits and adventures of the gods, we find projected, in symbolic codes, an abstract schema of desire. Fryes char acterization underscores this aspect of idealized wish fulfillment inherent to all myth: "In terms of narrative, myth is the imitation of actions near or at the conceivable limits of desire. The gods enjoy beautiful women, fight one another with prodigious strength, comfort and assist man, or else watch his miseries from the height of their immortal freedom. The fact that myth oper ates at the top level of human desire does not mean that it necessarily pre sents its world as attained or attainable by human beings" (36). To extend the implications of the connection Frye makes between desire and represen tation: the world of myth constitutes the vanishing point of signification, delimiting the human world by establishing the unattained or receding goal. Yet as collective fantasy, myth operates at the level of a collective desire, pre senting its world as an allegory of an alternative collective destiny drawn to newly conceived and redefined limits. Two years after the publication of Caniqui, Romulo Lachatanere brought out fjOh, mioYemaydll (1938). An exclamation of reverence forYemaya serves as the collection s title, curiously framed by the unusual double exclamation marks. Four years later, Lachatanere himself discredited the book, a collec tion of patakis, in his introduction to Manual de santeria (Manual of Santeria, 1942), where he admitted publishing the previous work "with a certain ir-

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114 o (lipterTkret responsibility" due to his dependence on unreliable sources, namely, youths who too willingly and inaccurately divulged the secrets of the cult (MS 10-11). Yet for all its distortions of or discrepancies from more authoritative versions (wherever they be found), j,Oh,mioYemayd!! stands as a seminal work of Lucumi myth and folklore. In his "Reference Notes" to the collection, Lachatanere expressed his desire that it "serve as a stimulus to others ... for the incorporation of what is black [de lo negro] ... to the national culture" (OMY xxxi). In the stream of Cuban letters during the 1930s, the book is a heteronomous island inhabited by gods unconcerned with the sociopolitical turmoil of the moment. Lachataiiere's Afro-Cuban collection affirms the folkloristic and mytho logical orientation of Afro-Cubanism marked by the appearance of Carpentier's jEcue-Yamba-O! in 1933 and the first volumes of Nicolas Guillens poetry in 1930, 1931, and 1934. In his prologue to Lachatanere s work, Fernando Ortiz attempts to "predispose" the reader of Lachataiiere's stories by instilling the notion that they have a religious function, such that "read ing will draw out all the value from the poetry and will be able to enjoy the brilliance of its metaphor, the genius of its theologic and cosmogonic phi losophy and the artifice of its mythological scheme" ("Predisposition vii). Thus framing the reading by these comments, the preface reminds us that we are dealing with a unique "literary genre" with its own mythicoreligious language. That is, Lachataiiere's mythic world, enclosed unto itself, features a cast of supernatural characters at the limits of desire. Abandonment, incest, matricide, cannibalism, abuse, fraud, sloth, cowardice, hypocrisythe gods com mit all the deadly sins and some additional ones with impunity. In the pri mordial world of this text, orishas struggle in armed combat against other orishas. Animals struggle against gods, and even some vegetable characters, including calabashes and yams, know how to assert themselves. They all squabble, members of one big dysfunctional Afro-Cuban family. The revital ized myths of Lachatanere's story cycle offer the etiological legends, caution ary tales, and cosmogonic narratives characteristic of an ethnic group's my thology. Their archetypes, consisting of "motifs" or "[i]dentical elements" of an oral tradition that are "worked and reworked," which Herskovits finds in African oral literature, give the transcultural model and pattern for subse quent narrative imitations ("Study" 363). The self-enclosed world of myth projected by Lachatanere's stories can be opened to various allegorical inter pretations, including a "nationalist" reading that construes it as defying the norms of Western (or colonial) civilization while preserving an ethnic

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The 0risb Rcpaklicu Cake o 115 subculture s narrative tradition. Its innovations include the introduction of Yoruba-Lucumi terms into the literary lexicon. Many of the orisha narratives in Lachatafieres work are recognizable as patakis, which, as will be recalled, function as repositories of counsel and knowledge in Afro-Cuban divination systems. In Lachataiiere's retellings, the patakis reveal a further, dreamlike function, that of wish fulfillments that perform symbolic reconciliations of social contradictions through the agency of fiction. A reading of a few representative and connected stories from Lachatanere's collection will unfold some of their allegorical dimensions, including the nationalist ones. The first paragraph of the collection's first story, "El rio" (The river), marks out the narratives "terrain" in several senses of the word. The "avalanche of men," it begins, entered the forest and trampled the herbs of the paths and "made the roads." In this manner, "man constructed his means of communi cation and extended the limits of the villages, establishing new relations and taking possession more and more of the secrets that the forest jealously guarded." The opening of the story thus refers us to a literal opening in the "dense forest" where culture meets with and masters the natural.The river is described metaphorically, as "winding snakelike [serpenteando] through the mountains," "contorting itself like a wounded serpent, showing and hiding its back in the convulsions of death." The river, so metaphorized, also "howls lugubriously" (OMY 35, 36). Reading the description makes us animists, present at the (mythical) beginnings of civilization, preparing us for the ap pearance of Agallu Sola. Agallu Sola, a laborer who is "strong and vigorous like a young warrior," one embodying the civilizing will to conquer nature, takes up the challenge to conquer the river. We know that he is also San Cristobal, the patron saint of Havana. Agallu Sola builds a boat in which he crosses the mighty river, and then recrosses it again and again until it settles into a "gentle and calm current." His labor has in this way connected a society across the waters and set the pattern for an economy based on commerce and transport between peoples (OMY 3 8). The master of the river will then accumulate great wealth in transporting passengers from shore to shore. The myth thus recollects, in narrative time, the birth of navigation in the origins of business. But one day one of Agallu Sola s passengers does not pay, or rather pays by removing her dress and offering herself sexually to the boatman. Only after completing their intimate commerce does she reveal her identity: "You have had the high honor of lying down with Obatala" (OMY 39). One wonders why the first story stresses the concupiscence of a female Obatala. Here, the

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\\i o (lnttrTkrtt Yoruba god of whiteness and purity has been syncretized with the Catholic Virgin of Mercy and will perform the function thatYemaya more commonly fulfills in other narratives from the Yoruba. In joining his line with Obatala's, Agallu Sola gains the privilege of knowing the name and origin of his clients and the right to demand prepayment for all he carries across the river. Lachatanere named the chapter "Ache," for it is grace, power, or blessing that the boatman receives as a consequence of his fortuitous union with the goddess. Chango is born of that union, but it isYemaya, the great maternal orisha, who raises him. Chango s illegitimacy is problematic precisely because the narrative treats it as unproblematic. Emblematic of Cuban writing's alter/ native originsrepeating perhaps the motifs of the Cuban populace's mixed or confused heritageChango's bastardy becomes a source of perverse pride, for the god is conceived much in the manner of Afro-Cuban writing, as ille gitimate, mulatto, orphaned, and culturally displaced. We will return to him shortly. It happens that one day a different child arrives at Agallu Sola's dock, plead ing for transport but without the means to pay the boatman. The child con vinces Agallu Sola to carry him on his shoulders. The orisha does so, only to find that the child grows heavier and heavier until Agallu has no choice but to let him drop in the river. Looking at the child, he realizes that he was carrying none other than Oduddua, who in exchange for his efforts gives possession of the river to Agallu Sola and then disappears. Unbeknownst to the boatman, he has carried the cocreator of humanity, the (mythical) first king of Oyo, dispenser of justice and guide of babalaos (OC 74). Throughout the stories of j;Oh,mioYemaya!!, as Agallu Sola's cycle exempli fies, the constant element is the transfer of a value from one character to another. The subject seeks to obtain an object over and against the wishes or efforts of (an) opponent (s), often turning to helpers for assistance. The pattern is further exemplified in the section of the book entitled "The Ekuele Board," a section appearing second among those of Lachatanere's stories. The plot revolves around Chango's acquisition of Orumila's coveted ekuele board, the Tablero del Ekuele (Table of Ifa). On that board, divination readings, registros, are made with the cast of the special necklace, consisting of a string of eight coconut shell pieces, called the collar, or ekuele (also opele, or epkuele). Narratologically speaking, the narrative tells of a subject, Chango, who desires the object. Surrogate mother Yemaya, and later on Eleggua, are the helpers (agencies, powers) providing the means to realize that aim. The obstacles or opponents are those parties who would withhold the board or

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The Orishas in Repoblkdn Coka o til prevent Chango from obtaining itincluding, at least early on, Obatala, the first owner (see Bal 26-31). During a thunderstorm, Yemaya finds to her surprise that the child Chango has appeared before her, cast out of the heavens by his mother, Obatala. The maternal Yemaya delightfully regards him as a gift and takes him in, but Chango soon demands that his adoptive mother take him to a giiemilere, or drumming party with religious significance. He then orders her to serve him his amala, or stew made with lamb and vegetables, and demands a sleeping mat that is not as dirty as his mothers (OMY 54-55). Chango continues to abuse Yemaya, calling her "criada" (maid) and abus ing her motherly generosity to the point of telling her to stop dancing to his wild drumming and go to a mountain to find him bananas, oguede. Eager to please, she leaves immediately. In a little while, Chango, god of fire that he is, sets the ile (house, hut) aflame. The solicitous mother returns to save her adoptive son but comes back empty handed. Chango upbraids her but gives her a second chance by sending her to Obatala s ile to procure the ekuele board. Exhausted, her feet transformed into bloody masses by her long journey to the ile, Yemaya finally arrives at the doorstep and faints. When she recovers, Chango is standing before her, the Tablero del Ekuele in his hands. He has taken away the board when Obatala, in her camino as Olofi (sic: "with all the attributes of Olofi upon her") returns home and detects the attempted theft. For her crime of aiding and abetting, Yemaya must labor for forty days in Obatala s house. At the end of the sentence, the god of whiteness grants the maternal goddess her liberty and the ekuele necklace to give to Chango. Chango receives the necklace and begins immediately to cast it "on the pol ished surface of the board, and in accord with the different positions taken by the beads, explains to Yemaya what has happened to her and gives her formulas to resolve her difficulties." Yemaya now understands that Chango is "thrower of the ekuele," which is the reason why he will not allow her to raise him (OMY 58, 59). That story line continues in the chapter "Olvido" (Forgetfulness), in which Chango has become a successful soothsayer but longs to return to beating the drums at the guemileres. He therefore gives the divining tray to Orumila but not without asking him to pay a regular percentage to Eleggua. In the story "Codicia" (Greed), Orumila runs a thriving business disentangling complications in the lives of the aleyos, or noninitiates, who come seeking a consultation. Eleggua as his assistant receives his assigned portion of profits, and all is welluntil Orumila's consultations earn him more money than he

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lit o (iiptcrTlrte needs. Then Eleggua offers one hundred coins to become Orumila's partner. Orumila refuses Eleggua, puts him off, tells him to come back, and then refuses to pay him altogether. An angry Eleggua devises a plan to make Orumila pay up. He goes out and splits himself into three beings. The first Eleggua he commands to stand out in the savanna and tell all comers that Orumila has lost his skill, thus defam ing the diviner s hard-earned reputation. He assigns the second one a posi tion at Orumila's doorstep and orders him to tell the clients that Orumila is just fine, he still knows how to cast the ekuele, but that he is out at the moment and the clients may, if they so desire, obtain a reading at the house of Orumila's "substitute." The third Eleggua plays the role of that substitute with his own board and ekuele necklace. Siphoning off Orumila's clientele in this manner, the old man's business withers away.To make a living, Orumila at the end has no choice but to pay Eleggua as a partner (OMY 64-69). As we follow the passing of the divination board from Obatala to Chango, and later to Orumila and Eleggua, we (re)learn the rationale behind ele ments of the Ifa ritual. The story of Chango's acquisition of the Ifa presents, in Ortiz's words, a certain "astute mystification" of the requirement to pay the Ifa diviner for his services, and thus serves as a narrative confirmation of the oracle's veracity and value ("Predisposicion" xxv).The story also indi cates how, by guile and cunning, Eleggua earned the right to become the intermediary between the orishas and humans, the hermeneut as messenger and nemesis who must be propitiated at the beginning of every rite. Eleggua as the purveyor of truth may resort to duplicity, even "triplicity," in perform ing his go-between role. Lachatanere's "Incesto" (Incest), within the series entitled "Chango," con firms the structure of Lucumi myth as a family "romance" situated at Frye's top level, or extreme, of desire. Yemaya Saramagua, the maternal one, is one day taken with a sexual desire for her adopted son. Chango, waking up from a nap, rejects her advances and scrambles up a palm tree. "ButYemaya, recov ered from the humiliation produced in her flesh, pursues him and runs wildly and her exuberant breasts sing in incessant pealing the lust of the omorde [woman], who has let herself be dragged by the impetuous force of her sex" (OMY 101).Yemaya's incestuous lust knows no restraint, and the story be comes pornographic. She cries, "Obini, satisfy me!" He responds, "Omorde, look for a beast like yourself!" As its transgression in this narrative reveals, the universal taboo on incest delineates, as Levi-Strauss has reasoned, the very boundary between nature and culture (46, 51). Yet the more-than-human orishas both precede and

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Tke OrisktsRtpaUkm Cabs o II) follow the establishment of the nature/culture dichotomy; that is, they may act as if no taboo existed for them. At the same time, they are anthropomor phic projections of a human desire cognizant of human limitations. Despite his misgivings, Chango weakens and gives in to temptation: "Their inverted bodies roll in confused movements and for a long while they possess each other contra natura" (OMY 102). "Contra natura" in this context paradoxi cally refers to that which goes against universalized social convention and not simply to that which "goes against nature." The orishas in their multiple caminos are free to define and redefine what is natural. Cros Sandoval retells the same pataki of Yemaya s consummated desire for her own son and fol lows it with yet another narrative, one in which it is Chango who makes the sexual advance. This time Yemaya disabuses him of his lustful illusions by taking him out to sea in a boat; out there, she saves him from drowning (RA 219-20). From the social criticism of jEcue-Yamba-O! to the mythical enclosure of j;Oh, mioYemayd!!, passing through the historical allegory of Caniqui, we chart the course by which selected elements of Afro-Cuban religion have been in corporated into the narrative of a nation and the multiethnic reidentification of a people. All of the texts from the 1930s examined in this chapter have demonstrated how the narrative of nationalist allegory, seen from the critical perspective of postcoloniality, make use of the propositions of a popularized religion for arguably nonreligious ends. Cuban writing in the republican pe riod, to be Cuban writing, included its component of sociopolitical critique. But that writing also needed a mythological base like that of Lachatanere's collection, a self-contained system of myths of no certain genealogy and with no immediate value for praxis, a textual foundation to which a properly Cuban culture could refer and by which that culture could refer, perhaps "incestuously," to itself. At the mythical level of desire, that orphaned writ ing aspired to become a heteronomous universenegating something in affirming its own right to beof which Lachatanere's article on the "Lucumi religious system" may have been the apologia and theoretical mirror of patience.

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4 IbhrMokri Nyuao manga terere [What is written cannot be erased]. Lydia Cabrera, Refranes de NegrosViejos In Miguel Barnet's poem "Ceremony with a Rooster and a Fish," from La sagrada familia (The holy family, 1967), the sacrifice of a black rooster in an Abakua ceremony serves "to preserve the scene / the splendor in the pitcher of Sikan / her cursed tongue." The lyric speaker observes the ceremony and imagines a transformation: "listening to Ekue who roars and swells / and stamps / because he wants to be a fish and not wood behind a curtain / because he wants to call himself Tanze and go away slowly / in the hard tide." The poem's proper names, its elliptical allusions and unexplained prosopopeia belong to an insider's language, a language that can only seem opaque to the uninitiated reader. The narrative of and about the ritual doubles that ritual, in effect doubling the ritual's metonymic displacements by the poem's modalizing propositions, such as "he wants to call himself Tanze." Ekue the wooden drum that roars like a bulldesires a transmutation into the fish Tanze, but the fish is already substituted by the sacrificed rooster, which at the same time signifies an "image" of the rooster, an ideal that is "intact in heaven" (saqrada 171). For, in the beginning, issuing from heaven, the voice of the Supreme God Abasi, it is said, was transferred to the fish in Sikan's pitcher and then displaced into the Ekue, the original drum of the original secret society. In the beginning, that drum stood in for Sikan s earthen jar, but now the goatskin membrane of Ekue's successors commemorates the use of Sikan's own skin as a drumhead in the original scene of sacrifice. As this series of transmutations suggests, the desire for metamorphosis conjures a complex phantasmic presence: in the founding myth and in the ritual of the Abakua, the roaring sound is a voice that speaks for Abasi. A multiple sacrifice (offish, woman, and rooster) is condensed into one sym-

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llshrttikii o 121 bolic act, and the splendor of the original sacrifice catechrestically amounts to a "cursed tongue" or to a cursed "language" (lengua), a pun drawing atten tion to the poem s own construction in language as memorial and echo of the sacrifice s inaugural speech. Yet the voice of Abasi itself is also a construction, one built of negations and differences: it manifests itself as the fish that would swim away but doesn't, becoming a memorial of self-difference or impossibility. By these tropological operations, and especially by metaphorical substitution, the assumed presence of Abasi in the voice of the drum is produced as an interplay of presence and absence. Although Abasi would speak, that in terplay suggests not so much the fullness of the voice as the hollowness of writing. The quotation that serves as epigraph to this chapter, Nyuao manga terere, is rendered, "Lo que se firma no se borra": that is, what is signed, what is written or what is inscribed within the religionlike the cult s groundsigns called firmas, grafias, or anaforuanacannot be erased. Cabrera glosses the translation in this way: "The commitment to which a Naiiigo is solemnly sworn (or obliged) cannot be refused" (RVN 59). Writingconsidered as an inscription on a surface, as a psychosocial contract among members of a fraternal order, or as a mnemonic prop substituting for the full presence attributed to the voiceprovides a key for unlocking the sign-world of the Sociedad Seereta Abakua. In the Abakua Secret Society, "writing" is a function of a whole institution, produced by the machinery of the institution s special lan guage, laws, tradition, psychology, ritual, and, now, its literature. The Afro-Cuban symbol systems that concerned the preceding three chap ters have exhibited the analogical thought that equates the word/thing rela tion to that of ache/nature, or in Kenneth Burkes terms, spirit/nature (RR 16). This metaphysical relation notwithstanding, the nature of language as system consists in a radical negativity toward reality; that is, in language's essential heterogeneity with respect to the noumenal world. The rhetoric of Afro-Cuban religion displays the labyrinthine complexity and self-referentiality by which the act of using or making of symbols negates both naive linguistic naturalism and the nomenclature theory of correspondence. The arbitrary or unmotivated relationship of language and reality, or the variable relation of signifiers with signifieds and referents, is precisely what allows symbol systems to produce relatively autonomous spheres of signification. The self-referential enclosure of language suggests an analogy for charac terizing other cultural systems and subsystems. The common name of the Ndnigo institutionthe Abakua Secret Societyindicates the greater empha sis it puts on clannish sociality than other Afro-Cuban religions known in the

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Ill o (dopier four national literature. Such sociality frames the production of secret signs whose operation obeys a strict logic internal to and consistent with the context of the fraternal order. Those practices and traditions, when experienced from the inside, or emically, by the believer, seem natural and right. Yet that inside is constituted by a language of symbols, such that knowledge and "posses sion" of those symbols earns one the right to belong to the society and com municate according to its conventions. The popular designation of Nafiigos for the members of the Abakua fra ternal associations originally named the Abakua figures called iremes, hanas, diablitos, or ndnigos. These iremes are the street dancers of the society, and they symbolize the spirits of the dead or the spirits of the society's founders. They are especially famous for coming out in the carnival on Epiphany, January 6, the Day of the Three Kings, when they can be seen running and dancing along the streets. Wearing masks that conceal their human identities, the iremes dress in multicolored or checkerboard costumes complete with coni cal headpieces topped with tassels, and they may also wear a big hat behind the headpiece, a raffia skirt, raffia cuffs, and a belt hung with bells. In festivals, the iremes dance to the beating of encomo and bonco drums with frenzied movements. In this way they pay homage to ancestors whom they revere in a rDii it Re?u; tnr Wtato Miilkc. litkiinpk,c. 1850. Mow IJKJOPII to (ill, Oil limi,(iki.

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IbhrUikii o | Ota J< RwOftidir Pitridi Uiiilne. Oil n wins, liietteiik cwtirj. MINI liriwl fc Mi. DM IIVIM, (ill manner bearing similarities to that of theYoruba Egungun cult (Ortiz, "Fi esta" 9, 11-12; CA 3:211; Simpson 92). The accounts of Nanigo belief and practice in Cuban literature date back to the beginnings of Afro-Cubanism, and that literature has often revealed the way in which a body of religious myth, doctrine, and ritual has entered into the forms of popular culture. Especially in the history of the Abakua in Cuba, esoteric ceremonies and in-group narratives have entered into a public language, where it is used to describe an otherness residing in the heart of society. In the sections that follow I will introduce some of historical, social, mythological, and ritual dimensions of the Nanigo world. This extended in troduction will give a context to readings of the Abakua sign system in narra tives by Ortiz, Carpentier, Cabrera, and Gerardo del Valle. III? Mud Society In the popular Cuban imagination, the Nanigos are surrounded by the aura of magic and interclan violence; they were once the talk of the town. In Fernandez Robaina's Recuerdos secretos de dos mujercs publicas, the former prostitute Consuelo speaks of the "epoch of Yarini," that is, the time of the Nanigo

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04 o (ktpttrhir celebrity Alberto Yarini y Ponce de Leon. Yarini was also the notorious pimp or chulo who attained a legendary status during the first years of the Republic. It was Yarini who gave Consuelo the name la Charme; he was also a conserva tive political leader and a high official in a Nanigo agrupacion or association. Yarini, Consuelo recalls, was shot to death by a certain Lotot in connection with the rivalry between the guayabitos and apaches, pimps from Cuba and France, respectively. The memorial for Yarini in the barrio of San Isidro, on October 24, 1910, together with his burial in the Colon cemetery, was a grand event: "There wasn't a whore, guayabito, Nanigo and people of all classes who didn't go to the funeral and burial," and the press reported an attendance of some ten thousand. Why the adulation? Yarini's mourners re membered his generosity; his largess seemed limidess, for he gave assistance in the form of money and influence with the police not only to his ecobios or comrades but even those who were not of his agrupacion. Yarini's funeral brought out the "espiritu del companerismo"the spirit of camaraderie, and of "honor" and "manliness"that prevailed in the politics, both the public and the clandestine, of the epoch (RDM 32, 34-35, 49, 45-^6, 50). Miguel Barnets informant "Rachel," a nightclub star or vedette from the prerevolutionary belle epoque, also speaks of Alberto Yarini: Yarini the cruel, the mysterious, the popular, the irresistible. Chulo and Nanigo, surrounded by an aura of power and violence, "Yarini had his harem. Woman were really crazy for him." Rachel tells of Yarini s knife fights, his part in the "black slavery" (la trata de negras), and his death during the fearful time when Halley's comet passed over (Cancion 33-36). These and other testimonials confirm the mystique that el naniguismo has held in Cuban culture. Long associated, often prejudicially, with the image of intergroup warfare and with an earthy, lumpen kind of spirituality, the name of Nanigo for some has meant a sort of bogeyman and for many has con noted criminality, violence, and political intrigue, all belonging to the dan gerous Afro-Cuban underworld, el hampa afrocubana. The Nanigo or Abakua religion traces its origin back to the Calabar region of western Africa. An animistic cult devoted to ancestor worship, it sprung from the Efik and Ekpe or Ejagham tribal groups of Calabar, in what is today southern Nigeria and Cameroon.The peoples who accepted their artistic and religious forms include the Ibibio, the Igbo, the Bras, the Koy, the Abakpa, the Brikamo, and the Oba (RA 20). The origins of the Ekpe or Ngbe, mean ing "leopard society," are found in the Ejagham (in Cuba, Ekoi) and the Efik, for the Efik word ngo leopard, forms part of the etymon nan-ngo"leopard men" (TN 100).The name Abakud is the Cuban Creole version of "Abakpa"

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A Is For Abakud o 115 (in Spanish, "Abaja"), by which the Ejagham are called in Cameroon. Thompson observes that the woman Sikan took the place of Ebongo, the Ngbe mother of the leopard among the Ejagham (FS 236, 248). According to Valdes Bernal, the Abakua group comprised of "Appapa" slaves from Calabar established the first cabildo in Havana in 1834-36the "Apapa Efo" (128). Cabrera in la Lenaua Saarada de los Nanigos (The sacred lan guage of the Nanigos) writes that early Abakua societies were formed in Ha vana, Regla, Guanabacoa, Matanzas, and Cardenas. The first groups were gen erally referred to as potencias, naciones, agrupaciones, partidos, sitios, ticrras, or juegos, and the first to be founded, according to Cabrera, were the Akua Buton in Havana and the Efik Buton in nearby Regla (13-15). In El montc, however, Cabrera cites an old Nafiigo "genealogy" of the potencias founded during that period: "Appapa (Efo), the foundation of Abakua in Cuba, authorizes Efik Buton, who authorizes Efik Kondo, Efik Numane, Efik Acamaro, Efik Kunakua, Efik Efigueremo and Efik Enyemiya; Efori Isun, Efori Kondo, Efori Ororo, Efori Mukero, Efori Buma, Efori Araocon.These are the seven branches of the two founding potencias, Efi y Efo" (196). Especially in urban settings with high concentrations of slaves, the Nanigos established their cabildos and in them kept alive the music, song, rituals, dance, and language they had carried with them in the crossing (TN 79). In addition to gathering its mem bers together for purposes of religion and entertainment, the Nafiigo cabildo could offer them relief for unemployment and sickness and for paying the cost of burials from a fund collected for those purposes (LSN 14). In another of Cabrera's accounts, the members of the early Nafiigo group called the Potencia Abakua, with its seat in Guanabacoa, worshipped the pa troness of the bay, laVirgen de Regla, who is doubled in the orishaYemayaOlokun (YO 18-19). The ceremonies of Nanigos thus combined Catholic and African, especially Lucumi, liturgical elements with those of Calabar (Bastide 114). This multicultural symbiosis of symbols can be observed throughout the religious art, ritual, mythology, doctrine, and ethics of the Abakua cult. The Abakua societies had already fallen into disrepute in the popular imagi nation of the Republic prior to the period of the Machadato. Eager to make Cuba over into a modern society, the Cuban bourgeoisie deprecated the Nafiigo cabildos as atavistic remnants of African institutions. Their comparsas and guemileres were outlawed in 1913. Police targeted the Abakua babalaos as perpetrators of crimes that included alleged acts of human sacrifice. Fight ing between rival agrupaciones provided jutification for harassments and raids against all practitioners.* Yet despite this state repression, in 1914 there were,

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\U o Chapter Foir according to Carpentier, some 107 Abakua agrupaciones active in Havana and its outlying districts and in Matanzas (MC 286, 291). Meanwhile, within the potencia's cabildo, Naniguismo had a different look. There, the plazas or leaders of the Abakua hierarchy would hold court and preside over activities and ceremonies. The great priest is the isue, some times called by the Bantu name mkongo, "jefe militar" or military chief. The isue presides over the initiation ceremony or rompimiento. It is he who holds the head of the sacrificed cock between his teeth and places it atop the sacred drum. Other plazas include the obon iyamba, the king and keeper of the Ekue and second in command; the nasako, or hechicero, sorcerer; and the ekuenon, priest or mystagogue (LSN 15). The aberisun, executioner of the sacrifice, takes charge of killing the hegoat. He slits its throat and feeds the Ekue with some of its blood, "charging" the drum already filled with the presence of the sacred voice. Then the ini tiates and ecobios or brothers of the potencia, as recorded in Ortiz, drink some of that blood, "in the manner of a sacramental communion so that [the Ekue] may renew its vitality." This rite, claims Ortiz, had its antecedent in human sacrifice and ritual anthropophagy, and it was the blood of a Kongo that made the Ekue speak until the time when a goat would be substituted for the man (TN 88, 100). Other plazas and priest-officiants of the society are as follows: The embdkara, an assistant priest, has the duty of untying the male goat and handing him to the main priest for sacrifice (CA 3:36). The embrikamo (or nkrikamo) plays the drums during the procession of priests and attendants, his steady pounding building to the climax at which the hegoat is killed. The embrikamo is also chief or foreman of the iremes, the one who calls them and leads them in their dancing (SSA 197-200; Hernandez Espinosa, 114-15). The empego draws the trazas or magic signs on the floor or walls of the cuarto fambdthe Naiiigo igbodii or inner sanctum. These signs resemble some what the veve of Haitian Vaudou. Their functions, which I will elaborate on later, are to identify groups and members and to help direct the power of the sacrifice toward specific ends (SSA 177). The cnkandemo prepares and serves the sacred meals to the orishas; he also prepares the meat, full of magic, of the sacrificed animals (SSA 224-26). Before the ceremony can commence, the eribangondo dances around the caul dron with the offerings of food and purifies the temple and takes charge of carrying the ceremonial offerings to the river (SSA 208-9; CA 3:234, 236).

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IbhrttiM o 121 "Ireme of the Consecration," the enkoboro dances ahead of the priests and scares off the hostile spirits (TN 90; SSA 215-16). The organization of these plazas is structured on the narrative of the found ing group of Efor priests. The initial sacrifice by the priests, constituting the central secret of the Abakua society, amounted to an act of unitive violence at the origin of the cult. The Secret The Naiiigos tell a complex foundation myth from the Efor, alluded to in the poem by Barnet discussed at the beginning of this chapter. That myth has numerous variants, some of them contradictory, all of them commemorat ing an originary act of violence by men against a woman and establishing the divine principle she was made to symbolize. In the beginning, the great god Abasi gave his chosen people, the Efor, the secret of the magic fishTanze and its mysterious voice. By a process of shifting significations, the fish.Tanze, stands in place of the leopard, the Ekpe or Ekue, whose Efor name continues to be borne by the central object of the cult (CA 3:220). The name ofTanze derives from the Efut Ta, lord or father, and the Ejagham nsi, or the fish that is doubled in the spirit of the leopard (FS 242). It happened one day that Sikanecua, or Sikan, remembered as the daugh ter of Mokuire, king of Northern Efut, discovered the fish by the creek known by the Abakua as Odan, in Calabar as Ndian. The sorcerer Nangobie placed the fish in the drum called Ekon for safekeeping. Some time after the fish had died, the voice was heard every time the sacred drum was played. Nangobie then initiated his seven sons into the secret (FS 236, 237-38, 241). Nasako, delegated to skin the fish, inscribed the skin with the marks of the leopard and stretched it across the mouth of a calabash. In this receptacle would reside the Voice. At a later time, Sikan committed the indiscretion of disclos ing the secret of the fish. For this reason, the sons of Nangobie, led by Nasako, ordered her sacrifice. On the instructions of his divining instrument, the manogo pabio, Nasako strengthened the drum with the blood of the sacrificed Sikan (CA 3:217). Initiated into the secret of that drum, Nangobie's sons, the seven chiefs of the Ejagham (Ngbe) and Efut hierarchy came to be remembered in time as the founding priests of the Abakua Secret Society (Bastide 112-13). The seven plumes adorning the silent drum match the seven chiefs and correspond to the hierarchy of plazas presiding in the lodge: the ekuenon, isue, mpego, iyamba, nkrikamo, and nasako.

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lit o Chapter Nir After the initiation of the first seven chiefs, Sikan s body served as a source of magic power. Sikan accepted her fate and now welcomes the souls of ini tiates after their deaths, helping them to escape the cycle of reincarnations and gain immediate entry into heaven (APA 48). In this function, she has become a figure of the feminine that eccentrically centers a masculinist reli gion. Her inaugural transgression, it turned out, set the Efik on the path of divine revelation, precisely through a violent objectification-fetishization of the feminine (CA 3:219). Thompson explicates the Nafiigo symbolism in somewhat mystical terms: "it came to pass that through this orchestrated union, skin on skin on wood and other media, male and female valences fused within a single object andTanze's mighty voice'the fish that thun ders like a bull'returned.The accomplished miracle assured the moral con tinuity of the Ejagham and the Efut and, centuries later, the Abakua" (FS 243). The incarnation is, to reiterate, an inaugural displacement: the life force of Tanze merges with the body of Sikan in the figure of the silent ritual drum, called Seseribo (SSA 88). The cost of the male drum's "speech," in other words, is the silence of the female drum during the Abakua ceremonies, since that plumed drum, mediating male and female orders, is not for play ing but for "display" Seseribo is the sacred "mother" drum that, unlike the Ekue, can be taken out of the sacred cuarto famba and looked upon. As Cabrera explains, "The Sese Eribo, Akanaran, mother of all the Nanigos, is a sound less and most sacred drum in the form of a cup with two handles whose skin is sewn on the borders and stuck with glue" (LSN 480-81).The drum mani festing the presence of Sikan bears the signature of the isue whose sacred duty it is to hold and carry it. This unplayed instrument has entered into the national mythology, as suggested in the poem by Teofilo Radillo entitled "Bembe," which describes the "Senseribo" as a silent drum in the form of a large feathered cup (Morales 336-37). As Cuervo Hewitt explains it, the cult of death surrounding the ur-sacrifice of Sikan, represented in the sacrifice of a goat or rooster and emblema tized in the silent drum, has a metaphorical significance that goes beyond a ritual sanction of male domination: "The sacrifice reiterates the link through which a complex mythological labyrinth of desire, rivalry, conquest and sal vation is edified. The expiatory death of the woman at the beginning was not brutal, senseless murder, but rather remembrance and reintegration with the femininity of the earth, the gentle, undulating and firm movements of the trees, of the flora, of the water, and of the leopard, sacred animal, a marriage

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IbbrANM o l of death with life. In short, a metaphysical orgasm, an imaginative one, of man with the indecipherable omnipresence of existence" (APA 49). This is a violent non-violence at the beginning, a reintegrative "metaphysical orgasm" that killed a female but saved feminity for all time. The gesture of this loving murder repeats itself throughout the narratives of Naiiigo ritual and Naiiigo narrative revisions that I will address in the following readings of works by Cuban authors. In Cabrera Infante's Tres tristes tigres (Three sad tigers, 1967), the book sec tion entitled "Seseribo" begins with an italicized epigraph, a little over a page in length, of the Sikan and Ekue myth. The epigraph, complete with humorously irreverent commentary, includes the story of how Sikan trapped Ekue in a water gourd in order to bring the fish before her incredulous fa ther. Despite her good intentions, Sikan, because she was a woman, commit ted sacrilege in hearing the Voice. Cabrera Infante's parodic retelling continues: Sikan paid for the profanation with her skin. She paid with her life, but also with her skin. Ekue died, some say from shame of letting himself be trapped by a woman or from the mortification of traveling inside a bowl. Others say that he died of suffocation, in the rushhe was not, definitely, made for running. But neither the secret nor the habit of meeting nor the joy of knowing that it exists was lost. With his skin was the ekue covered, which speaks now in the fiestas of the initiated and is magic. The skin of Sikan the Indiscreet was used in another drum, which bears no nails nor ligatures, because she still suffers the punishment of blabbermouths [los lengua-largas]. It has four plumes with the four oldest potencias in the four corners. Since it is a woman it is necessary to adorn it beautifully, with flowers and necklaces and cowries. But on its drumskin it wears the rooster's tongue as an eternal sign of silence. No one touches it and it alone cannot speak. It is secret and taboo and it is called seseribo. (89-90) Despite the comic deflation of mysteries surrounding the sacred drums of the cuarto famba, the strain of Afro-Cuban mysticism in the experience of Cabrera Infante's protagonists provides a holdfast against the undertow of time, a fragment of solidity amidst the phantasmagoric spectacle of a prerevo-lutionary society in rapid dissolution. The Seseribo thus forms a part of the shifting mosaic of Cuban identity and a fleeting symbol of transcen dence in the popular mythology. Negatively, by its silence, it also spiritual izes the idea of the feminine voice developed elsewhere in Tres tristes tigres.

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Bf o (liptffftir Introduced by Cabrera Infante in the first of several chapters entitled "Ella cantaba boleros" (She sang boleros), Estrella Rodriguez is the mulatta night club singer whose music allows her to rise above the baseness connoted by her physical enormity and inspires the personal cult of La Estrella among Arsenio Cue, Silvestre, and their friends. "We will adore her," declares the seriously joking narrator, "like the saints, mystically, in the ecstasy of re membrance" (ill 85). One could say that the narrative of Trcs tristes tigrcs expresses a will to restore a voice to the silenced Sikan by allowing her to be reborn in La Estrella, the star whom the "twins" ("jimaguas") Arsenio Cue and Silvestre "adore" with personal, half-ironic devotion. This activity, it should be noted, parodies as it recalls the studies of cult formation in Carpentier and del Valle. On one occasion, someone puts on a record of the mulatta singer, and "the song of the sirens came forth and we, every one of her public, were Ulysses tied to the mast of the boat, enthralled by this voice that the worms will not devour because it is there on the record now, in a perfect and ectoplasmic facsimile and without dimension like a specter, like the flight of an airplane, like the sound of the drum: that is the original voice" (TTT 115). By conflating mythologies, the passage equates the voice in the Abakua drum with the voice of the Homeric sirens. So doubled, the voice of divinity is a telluric, chthonic presence that a masculine perspective identifies with the feminine. Cuervo Hewitt rightly notes that "the myth of the rivalry and of the expiation of Ekue constitutes the narrative axis" of Cabrera Infante s novel, although its treatment of the founding myth is not as explicit as in more realist works of Afro-Cubanism. Cuervo Hewitt continues: "the beating of Nanigo drum is heard again, no longer in the temple of initiation, but in the very beat of the text, in the hidden voice of the characters, the secret, the silence and the rivalry of the masculine world of Havana, specifically be tween Arsenio Cue the actor and Silvestre the writer." We can hear Sikan s voice interwoven into the uneven fabric of the Cuban text, with the sacrifice of Sikanof the feminine principlesignifying the gift to the gods that sustains world of the masculine. At the same time, the phonographic record ing indicates a repetition of the simulacrum: endless reenactments in a sym bolic order, "keeping alive the memory" of a violence that inaugurated that symbolic order. The running about of the two habancros mirrors the antics of the Ibeyis or twins of Yoruba mythology, Kainde and Taewo, and thus rein forces the thematics of doubling through a mythic and experiential repro duction (APA 48, 52). By symbolic reproduction, the original and founding sacrifice can initiate a ritual by means of which a society of men can set aside

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IbhrUikii o |)| their rivalry and aggressivity, a woman's sacralized and reiterated punish ment serving as the means by which individuals identify themselves as a group and communicate as a group (see Guiraud 120). WhdtbWrittcn The Naiiigo rites take place in the cuarto famba, the inner sanctum in which the mystical signsanaforuana, also called trazas, grafias, firmas, or nsibidi are drawn on the floor or ground. So inscribed with such trazas, the cuarto famba encloses the stage for worship in the form of music, dance, chanting, sacrifice. The anaforuana resemble the pontos riscados of the candomble dance ritu als in Brazil as well as the aforementioned veve of Dahomeyan-Haitian cer emonies. Such graphic designs assumed specialized names in the Naiiigo context: anaforuana are signs; gando, chalked signatures; ereniyo, "revelations" (SSA68, 178). The anaforuana constitute a conventionalized pictographic writing with several functions. One function is to convey messages. A pictogram, for ex ample, may be written on a piece of paper and passed to an ecobio to inform him that he has, say, committed an offense against the statutes of the society. Another sign could notify him that he is to be poisoned as a punishment for revealing secrets. The signs are also indexes that focus religious power. The marks "affirm the past," for they carry the authority and power of the society's elders and forefathers. Calling them "arcane signs of sacred presence and recollection, luminous ciphers of the founding rulers and most important women," Thompson refers to a certain black stevedore of Havana by the name of Margarito Blanco, the would-be founder of an Abakua lodge, whose papers were confiscated by the police in 1839. Planning to call himself "monkongo" or Abakua keeper of justice, Blanco had refashioned nsibidi signs in his search for an emblem of priesthood (FS 227-28, 260). Prior to the initiation ceremony, or rompimiento, the isue will draw the schematic map of anaforuana signifying initiation with white chalk on the floor of the cuarto famba. For a funeral ceremony, on the other hand, he draws with yellow chalk the same grafias on the dead ecobio s body, but with a significant difference. Whereas the arrows in the initiation signs point downward, the arrows on the deceased's body will point upward, toward the sky of Sikan to which the ecobio s soul will ascend (Bastide 114; CA 3:305-11). As the power of the anaforuana and the founding myth suggest, signs of the past maintain a connection with ancestors and predecessors and serve as the subtext (a literal one, in the case of the ground-signs) for ritual. Yet other

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19 o (htpttr Ftur myths beside that of Sikan and the Ekue are signified in Abakua ceremonies. Castellanos and Castellanos have noted that both the Calabars of southeastern Nigeria and those brought to Cuba, called Carabali, opened their beliefs to Yoruba and Congo influences. This is true in the composition of the Abakua pantheon. As mentioned before, the Nafiigos call their supreme god Abasi, the creator who prefers not to meddle in human affairs. Roughly equivalent to the Lucumi Olodumare and made present in the sound of the Ekue, Abasi could be called, after Kenneth Burke, the "ideal audience" of Naitigo rites: He whose voice gives the meaning that returns to their source through those rites (see RR 35). The proverb Ekue ullo akanon Ekue ullo Abasi bon sums up the relationship between the supreme deity and the drum: "Where there is God, there is Ekue, and where there is Ekue there is God" (RNV 59). With the accommodation of the Lucumi doctrine, the match between Abakua deities and Lucumi orishas is a fairly close one: the Lucumi Obatala or the Catholic Virgen de las Mercedes is nearly identical to the Abakua god Obandio; avatars of the same Obandio are Obebe and Eromina. Babalu-Aye is Yinikoor vice versaand similarly, Chango is Okiin, Oya is Onife.Yemaya is Okande, and Ochiin is Yarina Bonda. Oggun corresponds to Sontemi, whereas Eleggua is either Obina, as the Soul in Purgatory, or Efisa, also known as San Juan. In addition to this pantheon of deities, the Abakua maintain a Bantu-reinforced belief in the opposition between Abasi, as the good god, and his evil brother, Nyogoro, the Diablo or Devil. This dualism may refer back to Biblical or Christian influences in the Bantu-Kongo culture that pre ceded the transplantation and transculturation of the religious through the slave trade (CA 3:220-22). In addition, Omale Efor is the spirit of the first forest god, Nkanima, comparable to the Lucumi Osain. Nkanima is assigned the special task of taking the testicles of the sacrificed goat to the mountain and leaving them under a tree as an offering to the dead (LSN 456, 397). The Bdy of CerenMny As in the Reglas Lucumis, the Abakua rituals conform to the pattern of rites de Tpassaoe, complete with the display of liminal or threshold symbolism ap propriate to the transition of the initiate from one stage to another. Ritual agenciesequipment and paraphernaliaplay their part in the process. A stretched-out goatskin mounted like a flag, the sukubariongo, represents Sikan s skin, which covered the first drums of the confraternity. This sukubariongo is carried in rituals by a sorcerer wearing women's clothing. The iton is the sacred staff with which the priest kills the he-goat in naitigo rituals. Among the musical instruments of the rites, the encomo, a small drum constructed of

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AlsFtrAbikii o | a trunk hollowed out with fire and covered with parchment, serves as a means of communicating messages. On the parchment of the silent Seseribo, the priest lays the sacrificed rooster or enkiko (TN 90; EYO 187; CA 3:391). Ortiz gives an introduction to Nanigo ritual and its mythical significance in his informative study "La tragedia de los nanigos" (The tragedy of the Nanigos, 1950), to which I have already referred in this chapter. Affirming the noble descent and dignity of the Abakua culture in that study, Ortiz al ludes to deep spiritual roots connecting the Nanigo rites with the mysteries of ancient Egypt, Thrace, Eleusis, and Crete. A summary of some of the points covered in that article, complete with the analogies made by Ortiz to Greek mysteries, will serve to summarize the Abakua ritual activity. As in the satyr plays of ancient Athens, the "theatrical" ebori mapd consisted in the ritual sac rifice of a goat. The Nanigo "tragedy" takes place in the isaroko or piazueJa, a patio serving as stage or site for the performance, in which stands a holy ceiba or a bush substituting for it. The mystikos sekos or inner sanctum of the Abakua is the cuarto famba; in it dance the aforementioned ireme or irimi devils, who carry the iton scepter, the ifdn, branch of bitter broom, or some other phallic symbol. Those diablitos, like the plazas and props, have their specific names: enkandemo, enkanima, enkoboro, amanagui (TN 79, 81-82). The ceremony may be part of a fititi nongo or fiesta; or it may be a baroko, the ceremony of "fraternal alliance" or initiation. Whatever the ceremony, the hieroglyphic anaforuana are traced in yellow chalk or plaster, recalling the aforementioned nsibidi of the Ekoi and the pictographic origins of writing. The ritual candles are lit: the enka-uke-Eribo, the enka-Iu-man-togo, and the enkalu-mape. At the culminating point of some ceremonies, the "Great Mystery," the Ekue, becomes present in a "voice" whose sound resembles the growl of the leopard (TN 83-85). In underscoring the affinities of the Nanigo rites with those of classical antiquityAfro-Cubans have their own Eleusinian mysteriesOrtiz points out the commonalities of the two symbologies: in both, the spiritual cycle is considered analogous to the life cycle. "In Cuba as in Greece, the lustral bath of the neophyte, the simulation of his death, the resurrection, the vision of the ancestors and his communication with them [are] equivalent to the Greek mysteries of the katarsis, the pamdosis, the epopteya, and the purification, the revela tion of the great secrets and the enlightenment of the initiates" (TN 99). It was espe cially the rites of the Nanigos that impressed Lydia Cabrera too with their complex mixing of memory, ritual, myth, and desire. For Cabrera, "the Nanigo 'juego' is an imitation, a repetition of situations, copy of the acts that

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1)4 o Cktpter Four took place in the origins of the society," and ritual repetition evokes the time of the origin: "When the Ireme Aberinan holds the hoof of the holy goat of the sacrifice, he is executing the same act of the first Aberinan who accompa nied the first Mocongo at the first consecration" (M 286).The initiation cer emony, displaying these elements and qualities, will be discussed at length in connection with specific literary exegeses to come. The funeral ceremony, which will also be discussed at a later point, has its own symbols and sequential operations. On that occasion, the ecobio's basin is inverted and plantain fronds are cut to signify the negations of death. The plate of the deceased ecobio is lifted from his place in a ritual (called levantamiento de plato) marked by its own elaborate anaforuana. The ceremony continues in the procession called beromo. Ecobios marching in the beromo raise up the sukubariongo (goatskin flag) representing the spirit of Sikan. The Sikan s Seseribo is held high atop a pole by one brother, and all the ecobios, carrying the articles of faith to the music of claves and bongos, follow the dancing iremes, who lead them to the cemetery (FS 257, 269). In Praise of Ehue Much of what I have summarized in the preceding discussion of the Nafhgo institutionits myth, doctrine, and ritualappears in some form in the works of Afro-Cuban narrative. In an early literary precedent, Morua Delgado's Sofia (1891), the Nanigo character Liberato has his brother-in-law, Nudoso del Tronco, killed in the manner customary to the secret Abakua societies, making his murder an execution. This act symptomizes a violent political brand of Naniguismo that the reformer Morua Delgado found to be among the "social factors" responsible for the blacks' backwardness in his decadent society (LB 144, 160). As remarked earlier, the first significant treatments of Afro-Cuban religion in twentieth-century literary narrative, beginning with Carpentier's jEcueYamba-O! (1933), are concerned not only with theYoruba-Lucumi tradition but with the Abakua. The two volumes of Ortiz's sociological Hampa afrocubanaLos negros esclwos (Afro-Cuban underworldthe black slaves, 1916) and Los negros brujos (The black sorcerers, 1917)present much information on the Abakua associations. In those works, the Nariigos's social reputation for intergroup rivalry and violence is confirmed. In later, more literary works, the Nanigos are identified with the knifings and murders narrated in jEcue-Yamba-Oj, Gerardo delValle's Cuarto fambd (1951), and Manuel Cofiiio's Cuando la sangre se parece al fueao (When blood looks like fire, 1977). Fitting in with this image, the machismo of the Nanigos, the manly style of behavior and de-

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JUsftrUlM o |H meanor known in Cuba as guaperia, is shown in those works to provoke the violence that often broke out between rival potencias (Cuervo Hewitt and Luis 34). It is interesting to note how the construction of Abakua-related narratives evidences a repeated effort to teach the reader an insider's vocabulary, essen tial for understanding the words and deeds of their Nanigo characters. Glossaries, parentheses, appositives, footnotes, and intercalated definitions guide the uninitiated reader through the texts of Abakua religion and history Such features characterize Carpentier's groundbreaking first novel. The title of Carpentier's first novel has been translated as lord Be Praised (literally, "jSefior, Loado Seas!") but the original title of course refers to a central object of worship in the Abakua cult, the sacred Ekue drum. Because I have discussed some of the Lucumi-related themes of the novel in chapter 3,1 will only address its Abakua dimensions here. For the black Nanigo char acters of Carpentier's novel, it will be recalled, Afro-Cuban religion offers a refuge for the damaged psyche and a sign of difference on which to base a cultural identity. At the same time, as I argued in chapter 3, Menegildo's participation in the Nanigo practices serves as an escape valve and a form of self-expression, a means of creating solidarity, and a mode of resistance to economic exploi tation. Although Salzmann correctly observes that liberation through the rhythms of African music and dance is no more than a "merely physical lib eration that only from an ingenuous point of view could be considered whole" (98), his view does not explain the whole appeal of the Abakua soci ety for Menegildo nor does it do justice to the significance of the society's ritual, myth, and doctrine as they are reworked and reexamined in the novel. Dathorne has pointed out that the initiation ceremony depicted in ;EcueYamba-O! embodies the African legacy in Cuba, affirming the connection of Afro-Cuban identity with ancestral myth and ritual (114).The Nanigos, fur thermore, in calling their initiation a rompimiento, refer to a breaking or break ing off. To undergo initiation into a new phase of personal evolution is to create a rupture or break in the course of one's life. Within the rompimiento ceremony itself, the individual undergoes a transformation, turning from the status of amanison, uninitiated believer, to abanecue, initiate. To actualize this transformation means to identify with a character in myth, to play a role in an archetypal narrative that restores at least in part one's sense of personhood in a dehumanizing social environment. The following summary of the distinct actions in Menegildo's rompi miento will reduce it, on the analogy of the sentence, to its simple proposi-

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\U o (kopt
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IkhrJIMii o | 27. Fiesta begins 28. Ecobios play drums 29. Ecobios drink aguardiente (cane liquor) 30. Ecobios eat the iriampo (ritual food) 31. Ecobios compete in lengua (exchanging proverbs) 32. Iriampo offered to dead in emgomobasoroko circle 33. Ireme dances again 34. Nasako ignites powder crosses 35. M seizes pot and hurls it 36. Ecobios, in procession, sing Passing through the ritual sequence, the ecobios are prepared and then introduced into the mystery of the Ekue, the centering symbol of the Abakua cult. Nakedness connotes the birthing process and the baby s helplessness, infantilist associations that identify the would-be initiate prior to transition into full membership in the association. The passage of the neophytes into the state of the abanecue is accordingly symbolized by the action of putting on clothes. Ritual acts of disorientationthe blindfolding, spinning around, the drinking, the long periods of dancingprepare the subject for reorien tation as one who will enter the group. The entire ceremony emphasizes the dependence of the neophytes on the elders in the faith for instruction and guidance. With the elders in charge, the initiation transforms the outsider into insider and the ignorant into a possessor of the gnosis that is the privilege of the cult. The mechanism of consecrations and substitutions described with references to Barnet's poem at the opening of this chapter is reiterated as a process by which the ties of a group are forged and strengthened. Another rompimiento is described in Manuel Coflno's Cuando la sangre se parece al fucgo, in a manner that reveals other exegetic and operational features of the initiation ritual. The protagonist Cristinos introduction to the Abakua mysteries takes place in a toque de tambor, or drum-playing ceremony, where Cristino watches the dance of the iremes, learns some Efik, and sees the feath ered Seseribo drum. At a later date, he will be initiated into his potencia, the Ubioco Sese Eribo. The ceremony requires a rooster, a bottle of aguardiente, and the customary fee or dcrecho. As he arrives at the site of the rompimiento, Cristino sees a rooster and a male goat, both tied to the ceiba, both of which will be sacrificed. He confronts the kiriofo or group of potencia leaders, the plazas of the potencia: the isue, iyamba, isunekue, ekuefion, empego, mosongo, abasongo, and nkrikamo. Cristino is marked with the symbol or

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lit o (ttpterFtir traza of his potencia in white chalk, then cleansed with basil; the rooster is passed over his body; he is taught laws and doctrine (Cofifio 86, 94-96, 241). At the end of this process, he is led into the climactic part of the initia tion, which takes place in the chamber of mystery, the cuarto famba. Cristino tells of being blindfolded and hearing the drumming while awaiting the moment of revelation: "I heard a prayer and after a while distant thunder, a sound that grew for seconds. It seemed that I had a savage bull on top of my head, a furious roaring lion. It was the Ekue. I had him in my head and they were rubbing him [lo fragallaban] to make that sound. I couldn't bear the noise and trembled, I shook to my bones. That hoarse sound, unbearable, penetrat ing, intense, was the voice ofTanze, the sacred fish, of Abasi, of God. The voice of the god was entering me through the head to stay inside me like a roar of fury" (Cofifio, Cuando 96). The climax of the ceremony sends the participants, all ecobios and neophytes, back into the past and the time of myth. Or it gives them that impression, for the passage also describes the elements that would produce the state of excitation conducive to a mystic encounter. Isolation, darkness, anticipation, suggestion, rhythmic drumming, fatigue, and the whole symbol-filled setting prepare for the ecstatic moment of a ritual recentering of consciousness focused on the penetrating and mys terious sound of the Ekue. In a jarring return to sociohistorical reality, Carpentier s last chapter con cerned with Menegildo's initiation ends with a description of a barbershop with an upholstered barber's chair from North America. As this image connotes, the initiation has not changed the socioeconomic circumstances that limit his life chances, nor has it equipped Menegildo and his ecobios with the means to critique or change it. Add to Menegildo's ignorance his brutish indolence and his subscription to the Nafiigo's macho code of conduct and Carpentier's skeptical profile of an Afro-Cuban life seems complete. Menegildo is ready to be killed quickly and senselessly in the intergroup warfare be tween the Efo-Abacara and the Enelleguelle (EYO 104-5, 135). Popular talk or gossip and narratorial observations in Carpentier's text metaphorize the rivalry between the Enelleguelle and the Efo-Abacara asso ciations as an antagonism between the Toads and the Goats. The narrator makes it clear that theirs is a feud of signs, at least up to the point where the fight ing breaks out. Drum-playing, firmas written in yellow "chalk" (or "plas ter," yeso), gourds of brujeria or sorcery sent by one group to the otherall these signs work hostile magic against the signs sent by the enemy. Reading such signs is risky business: "A slight 'bad interpretation' would suffice to provoke encounters" (EYO 169).The rivalry anticipates delValle's depiction

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IbFtrlMii o l of conflict between the potencias in his story "Cuarto famba" (to be dis cussed shortly), wherein the semiotics of group formation and antagonism are studied in greater depth. Carpentier s novel concludes with an account of Menegildo s violent death at the hands of a rival Naiiigo group that attacks Menegildo s group in a fiesta celebrating the initiations. His death leaves his lover, Longina, alone and de pendent on the mercies of Menegildo s unsympathetic family. When Longina gives birth to a son, also named Menegildo (EYO 183), we know that an other Afro-Cuban and future abanecue will continue the cycle of poverty, ignorance, mystical rites, and violence past the novel's ending. Inside the Cuarto Fambd He who comes to inspect it will only find the sacks, canes and roosters in the cuarto fambd. And on the altar our insignias he will see. And if you want to mock me, four will come, a few, since the encorocos can close in on me. He who becomes paluchero, at once they'll bury him because I beat the drumskin quickly with the "iton." Come on, ncgros, don't butt in, 'cause I'm from the Sitos, and die if you don't respect the juego "Betango." (Baez 384) The anonymous Naiiigo song titled "El cuarto famba," reproduced in Baez's Enciclopcdia dc Cuba, describes for us once again the sacred room of Abakua ceremonies, a site of mysterious signs. The lyric speaker is probably the Abakua singer called the morud yuansa, charged with the responsibility of an swering, with a mortifying comment, any disrespectful comments made about the sanctum sanctorum of the Abakua society (see CA 3:236). The

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141 o (Inter (fir morua yuansa's song is called a puya, a jest, literally a goad or prod, that taunts the uninitiated viewer, possibly a hostile intruder ("que venga a inspeccionarlo"), with the claim that he does not know how to read those sign-objects inscribed in italics in the poem, nor even knows the Efor or Efik words that name them. For that outsider, a rooster is only a rooster and not the enkiko, specially prepared for the ritual offering. At any rate, only initiates, the abanecues, are permitted entry into the fambd, the sacred room of Nafiigo rites.Those who come to mock will have to confront the encorocos or ekuruku, the congregated group of abanecues, who can be called immediately with a beating on the drumhead, or the "cuero," with a stick or scepter called iton or itan (M 209, 211, 214). At the last, the singer calls out a final challenge: "de los Sitos soy yo," which translates as "I come from [or belong to] the Sitos"the Nafiigo associations or potencias, "sitios" (sites)." Intruders may pay heavily if they do not respect the Betango, also spelled Betongo, a juego of Havana, named after a territory of Efor (LSN 195, 224, 263, 109). (It is generally acknowledged that the Eforor Efut belongs to the oldest Abakua lineage, that of the Calabar Ekoi; the Efik branch, on the other hand, proceeds from the Ibibio line [CA 3:212]). Let this anonymous poem serve to frame the treatment of Abakua themes in a story collection whose title, or the main part of it anyway, sounds like that of the poem"cuarto famba"but is written 1 /4 lamba y 19 cucntos mas. Midway into the period between the publications of jEcue-Yamba-O! and Cabrera's La Socicdad Secreta Abakua (1970), Gerardo del Valle's Abakua stories first appeared in an anthology entitled Rctazosa word meaning remnants, scraps, or fragmentsin 1951 (Bueno, Historia 416). Born in Venezuela of Cuban parents in 1898, Gerardo delValle lived in Havana since the age of four. There he observed and recorded the legends, superstitions, beliefs, and practices of the blacks of the hampa, especially of those belonging to the Abakua society, by now in a period of decline. Del Valle participated in the same movements of the vonguardia as did Carpentier, including participation in the Grupo Minorista, and like Carpentier manifested an early interest in the Abakua society. Like Carpentier as well he was jailed in 1927 for anti-Machado activities. As Salvador Bueno has observed in his dustjacket notes for the 1967 edition of del Valle s anthology, the Maracaiboborn writer's narratives do not exhibit the same rigor and ethnological accu racy as those of other Afro-Cubanists but offer instead a "literary elaboration" of African motifs found in a Cuban culture. It is on the dustjacket of that edition where the tide of del Valle's book is announced as 1 /4 fambd y 19 cuentos mas. The fraction designating "one fourth" (cuarto) suggests the use of a

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thftrUikii o 141 secret code or inside joke, as it plays on the name for the sacred room (cuarto famba) in which the sacred drum is kept while referring at the same time, metonymically, to the exclusive group that meets in the room. Some stories of the collection depict scenes of the kind of violence associ ated in the popular imagination with the Abakua potencias, tracing the ori gins of that violence, as did Carpentier, to the dynamics of group formation and rivalry. In all the Nanigo stories of 1 /4 fambd, narration and dialogue showcase the Afro-Cuban argot of Nafiigosoften used and then defined in parenthesesto give an impression of the insider's experience of the reli gious culture and the whole atmosphere of camaraderie, secrecy, danger, and violence surrounding the potcncia abakua. More hospitably than does the poem that opened this discussion of del Valle s works, the stories beckon the reader to enter into the cuarto famba and into the Nanigo s daily struggle for identity, recognition, power, and life, in a universe ruled by the laws of Abasi, the codes of the potencia, and the politics of the hampa.The stories tell us: learn the mysteries of the Ekue and the Seseribo, and beware the evil eye and the icua rebcncsiene (the Nanigo's knife). Del Valle evokes these particulars of life in the potencia as well as its cer emonies, its "executions" of rival gang members, its bachatas and bembes (reli gious parties)and all the erotic and bloody attraction it had for Cubans after the 1930s, when avant-garde writers continued to search through AfroCuban lore for the bases on which to redefine a national culture. Frequent digressions interrupt del Valle's narrative in order to describe ceremonials, explain symbols, and fill in historical background, as if to ensure that the noninitiated reader can acquire enough competence in the reading of the Abakua sign-world to understand what is going on. A glossary at the end of the text, perhaps hastily composed by the look of its sometimes unalphabetical ordering, provides more definitions. From an often analytic and criti cal perspective, the narratives draw out connections between religious belief and criminal behavior, again with resemblances to the way Fernando Ortiz characterized the hampa in Los negros brujos. The stories also depict the involvement of Nanigo groups in the politics of a time when politicians, such as Menocal in his 1920 campaign, sought their support. That such politicians solicited Nanigo support was evident in the fact, noted by Martinez Fure and the Castellanos, that many of the electoral materials of the time were printed in Efik (DI 205; CA 3:304-5). Several of del Valle s Afro-Cuban characters are shown to consort with local politicians, who in some cases hire them as guardaespaldas, bodyguards, or as outright hit men.

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142 o (kipttrftir Whereas the Nanigo stories of 1 /4 fambd also outline the cosmology and mythology of the Abakua society, their principal focus is on the sociopsychology of group formation. The characters, subject to a determinism they only dimly understand, demonstrate the thesis that the fault for the ills of Cuban society in the period is not in the orishas but in those who rule the little world of the hampa. To a greater degree than in Carpentier and Cabrera, who attempted to evoke the aura of mystery surrounding depicted rites and symbols, delValle's narrator takes a skeptical approach. A philosophy of literary form takes prior ity over a philosophy of divine intervention and mystical power in 1 /4 fambd. The Nanigo content in some stories appears marginal or superadded to the main action of the narrative, as local color or exotic backdrop to the action. In addition, some of the specifications concerning ceremonies or Yoruba hagiography do not agree with more authoritative accounts in Ortiz, Cabrera, the Castellanos and Thompson. Yet with all their superficialities or distortions, and because of them, delValle's stories reveal much about the place of the Abakua societies and their role in the Cuban imaginary. In the collection's title story, we read of four old ecobios who decide to start up their old famba, called the Molopo Sanganampio, again after its dis solution fifteen years before. The whole business starts when the old ecobios hear that two Nanigo groups, on the point of engaging in a fight and armed with their icua rebesiene, or knives, have been arrested by only four policemen. The narrator exclaims, "What a humiliating way to run down the name of the glorious institution, and what cowardice [valor mas enano] of the encuris (youths), to the extreme of forty men letting themselves be led away by four munipos (policemen)!" (delValle 82). The "king" of the Molopo Sanganampio, its Efimeramaetacua, has called on his companions to vindicate the "glorious institution" by forming a potencia strong enough to stand up to the police, unlike the groups of the encuris who bring shame upon all Nanigos. This narrative, we pause to note, is re plete with words in Efik and Hampa slang (Troboco Iren, nampcado, Erenobon, apapipio, eronauibds, abanecues, and so on), and thus constructs a verbal uni verse of its own. Using such language, Efimeramaetacua proudly recalls his torture in the Castillo del Principe at the hands of a young official of the Guardia Civil, to whom "The King" refused to become an apapipio and inform on his ecobios. He also recalls killing that officer with a well-directed knife in the chest, a punishment the officer "deserved" for trying to force the Nanigo to break the unwritten law against informing. Nostalgically, Efimera maetacua recalls a Golden Age of the Regla Abakua: "What times! What hero-

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IhhrJlMii o 14) ism! Naiiiguismo was invincible, and when you agreed to kill a man, it was not to rob him but for very just motives. Its ends and programs were as good as those of any white fraternity formed for mutual protection. One fought for the emancipation of the slave and one worked ardently for the indepen dence of Cuba. Nevertheless, always, in every moment guarandaria, guarandaria, guareri (To a friend as to a friend and to an enemy as to an enemy)."To bring back the heroic days of the Nanigos, the potencia reassigns the plazas or offices of its chiefs (in descending order, with delValle's spelling): insue, illamba, mocongo, empego. The ecobios buy the materials for the diablitos' costumes, along with paraphernalia and cocks for the Seseribo altar of the cuarto famba, which now has a membership of seventy (delValle 84). Yet group formation again means group rivalry. The ruling potencia of the Gumanes, one of the modern associations composed of young thugs at the service of a local politician, challenges the Molopo Sanganampio to battle. Meeting on a bare plot of land, the two groups face each other, dancing to the sound of bongos. The ecobios of the Molopo seem to disappear in the shadows, then suddenly reappear "as if from the center of the earth," their heads covered with handkerchiefs and shouting in Carabali.Twenty Gumanes are killed or "cleaned," limpiados. Three of the remaining youths challenge the chiefs of the Molopo to one-on-one combat, but the jcfc mdximo or insue of the old-timers, Erenobon, takes on the three of them single-handedly. Erenobon, armed with his icua rebesiene, knows how to use it: El Negro is slashed in the chest; Enano, stabbed in the groin. Trompeta, injured, tells his adversary to kill him, but Erenobon will let him live, and he does, momen tarily, until the victim catches a bullet shot by the police (munipos), who have arrived to break up the rumble. The famba Molopo Sanganampio escapes, no one informs on them, and it is "installed in another place in greater secrecy and . recognized, by all the potencias of Havana, Marianao, Regla, Matanzas, Guanabacoa, and Cardenas, as the first of all times past and present" (delValle 86, 88). Unlike the title story, Lucumi elements predominate in the story that is placed first in delValle's collection, one that establishes an ironic perspective toward Afro-Cuban religion. In "Ella no creia en bilongos" (She did not be lieve in bilongos), descriptions of the solar or tenement named "La Casa de Lola" (Lola's house), where a bembe will take place, evoke Africa in Havana. Papa Casimiro throws the elifas, the cowrie shells of the diloggun, which tell him to advise a suspicious Candita to "[b]e extremely careful with light cin namon, because it was going to darken the greatest thing in her life." That greatest thing is Candita's husband Paulo, obsessed with another woman, a

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144 o (Inter Four cinnamon-skinned mulatta named Chela. Chela is a quitada, one who has "re moved" herself from the cult, no longer a believer. The jealous wife commis sions Papa Casimiro to produce a bilongo to do harm to her rival, and the ceremony will involve Candita s participation in the rite of the limpieza or spiritual cleansing. DelValle describes the homages rendered to "Echo" (sic), said to have "influence over Eleggua." Consistent with the Christianized sim plification of the orisha tradition, the narrator also calls Echo "the devil himself, who poured so many troubles and misfortunes on decent people" (del Valle9, 11). In the room of the bembe, the babalao prepares the limpieza that should rid Candita of Echo's evil influence: "she began to receive, from the iyalocha and her helper, the rubbing with the blood of the black rooster, the feathers of the same, almost turned to dust and overturned on her head, falling to her feet, chumbas [baskets] full of grated coconut, dried corn, and a preparation with fresh basil water, mint and some of the flowers of the Sacramento jubilar." When Candita disrobes for the herbal bath, the ceremony becomes a virtual striptease, momentarily rekindling Paulo's interest in his wife. Candita's rival watches on, but she is not to be outdone. Since "modern" Chela does not believe in bilongos, she can interrupt the ceremony to put in practice her own "sistema" (system): she opens up her night gown, revealing her own body, "bronze, triumphant and provocative, tremulous with desire and anxi ety, fixing her ophidian eyes at Paulo, who, ecstatic, trembling and yearning, contemplated her as well." The husband and his lover leave the Casa de Lola together. The babalao explains the outcome to a disconsolate Candita in these closing words of the story: "The two are prisoners of Echo and it is to be expected that the evil fire that envelops and guides them will be consumed. We are going to evoke the powerful beings that will save them and then restore peace to this afflicted home" (del Valle 12-13, 15, 16). It would seem that old "black magic" is defeated by plain old lust in the end, but the babalao's consoling words hold out for a happier resolution in the future. The sociological aspects of Nafiiguismo are emphasized in the incidental details of delValle's "La majagua nueva" (The new jacket). It tells the story of Cheo, an agenciero or furniture mover who suddenly receives a hundred pesos for an unspecified job he did the night before. With the money in hand, Cheo decides to buy a majagua, a linen jacket, because "[a]lmost all his ecobios owned at least one and the modern negritas were going more and more for los hombres chcveres [elegant, "cool" guys]." In his new majagua, the tall and mus cular Cheo ought to make a big hit at the party held at the Solar de los Mosquitos, where the famous Sexteto Lucumi will be performing. But there's

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IhforUflkii o 14! going to be trouble at the solar. Members of the potencia Embrillo are wait ing nearby, enemies of Cheo s own Chcquendcque tongobd ballc, a potencia of which he is the iyamba or second chief. Cheo has not brought his icua rebesiene, but he carries his cocomacaco or cane-truncheon under his arm. Besides, he can take care of himself, he has known the inside of a jail (embocobi) and prison (barancon) for having fought for his own group (del Valle 35,36). The narrative presents other signs related to Abakua culture that motivate the actions and reactions of the characters. Cheo believes that the owner of a house into which he and his ecobios are moving furniture has meant to jinx themthe verb is "basiliquiarles"with his evil, "basilisk" eyes. A Virgin of Regla, to whom he lights candles, adorns his apartment and brings him luck. The bachata or fiesta at the solar is celebrated by the political boss of the neigh borhood in honor of "one of the more 'consequential* [members] of the party," exemplifying the manner in which politicians would court the Nanigos of their district (del Valle 32, 33, 37). Into the tension-filled atmosphere of the Solar de los Mosquitos steps Cheo, wearing his new majagua. The members of the rival potencia are there to meet him. With tragic consequence, one of them calls him by a word that Cheo does not understand, "jPepillito!," which del Valle s glossary defines as "Youth, of either sex, who goes overboard and thinks himself a refined and irresistible Don Juan, and who dresses outlandishly." Sensing an affront despite his incomprehension, Cheo raises his cocomacaco to strike back; the ensuing chain reaction of blows leads an enemy to stab him with his icua rebesiene, making Cheo a "victim of his majagua nueva" (del Valle 38, 209, 39). A jacket conjoined with a single word, one sign plus another, suffices to bring down disaster. Politics and Naniguismo appear both together and mixed up in "Para consejal" (For councilman). The news is going around the potencias: the municipal assembly of the Palotista Party has nominated the Nanigo Eduviges Ramos, also known as Candela, for election to the council. The behind-thescenes handler responsible for Candela s nomination is one Mano Abierta (Open Hand), president of the Comite Palotista of his barrio or neighborhood district. A smooth operator who knows how to "work politics," the white Mano Abierta has joined the Nanigo branch of the Efo in Guanabacoa: "he was 'sworn in and baptized with cemetery dirt,' he danced like the best 'morua' and he understood the language of drums and bongos" (del Valle 94-95). The nominee Candela, on the other hand, is a black man with a history of tdngonas (fights) who has done time in the embocobi (jail) and the cufon enongoro (prison). He presides as insue or first chief over the Abatanga Efo; Mano

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I4< o (liptcrhir Abierta belongs to this potencia, which is affiliated with the Partido Palotista and closely connected with the other potencias of the same Efo branch. The enemies and rivals of the Efo are the potencias of the Efi branch, which opposes the initiation of whites. The narrator describes Candela as "intelli gent," one in whom "the fanatical ceremonies of the Nafiigos did not pro duce much religiosity in him. But he was aware of what it meant politically to count on a secret and offensive force among numerous elements of the people." With an eye to advancing his political ambitions, Candela has learned to manipulate the languages of both Abakua and civil society. The narrator confirms "he had educated his beak [pico]," and he is quoted later as invok ing the names of Marti and Maceo (delValle 95, 97). Yet the campaign to build up support among the Efo has backed Mano Abierta into a corner. Knowing that the Efi are planning some tangana at the next Efo meeting, the white representative finds that he cannot hire body guards, who would make Candela look cowardly; yet a confrontation be tween the rival potencias could get ugly and bear out, once again, the truth of the proverb, "guarandaria, guarandaria, guareri (to a friend as to a friend and to an enemy as to an enemy)." Mano Abierta also knows that asking the govern ment to intervene and maintain order would also bring on disfavor among his Abakua constituency, reluctant to rely on any "outside" protection (del Valle 96, 97). Into this perilous situation steps an ancient woman by the name of fia Julia, and she will bring down disaster upon the nominees. She is "an appa rition arisen from a medieval witches' sabbath," a woman feared by all as a bruja (witch) responsible for powerful registros and bilongos, keeping close ties to "Echo, called "el Diablo." It turns out that fia Julia has an old score to settle with Candela for his having withdrawn support from her grandson, and Candela, despite his "freethinking," fears the old woman. Sent by the potencia Efi, fia Julia approaches the podium, scares Candela into silence, and then, with a frightening curse, throws a bag containing a red mixture in his face. The magic attack overcomes Candela, who faints on the stand, and later on succumbs to a painful possession by Echo. Mano Abierta finds his political hopes dashed as well, his nomination for representative now "in the vultures bill" (delValle 99).The conclusion demonstrates how the privileges of Abakua membership may come at the cost of vulnerability to the same pow ers in which the individual has invested. Other stories in del Valle s collection appear less like fictional narratives than Afro-Cuban scenes or portraits. The narrativity they do exhibit consists in their representation of ceremonial events. In two stories in particular, ritual

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IbftrJUikii o |4I provides the syntax of the narrative construction. The first story, entitled "El tata," tells of an unnamed brujo's activities during the ojo-shango, the fourth day (Chango*s) of the Lucumi week. The Tata (or "taita," meaning papd) leads a special bembe called a batucafu in which he attempts to induce Chango to send Batala (Obatala and/or Babalu-Aye) to remove the "Elegba" that has entered and sickened the body of one of the women of the cuarto famba. He then invokes the god of fire and thunder but fears that the violent Oggun will displace Chango, who is Oggun*s traditional rival. This is exactly what happens: "Elegba helps Oggun and multiplies; the saint goes into all in at tendance. Oggun wants war and loses patience. The Tata, knowing that its very dangerous to fall out with the orisha, changes the tone of all his chants, goes down on all fours and imitates the roaring of a lion. And like a lion he rushes at all those in the way who, for their part, also possessed by the spirit of belligerence, strike out against one another" (delValle 111-12). By all other accounts, Oggun would not enter into everyone at the bembe in such a way Possession occurs in individuals under specific psychophysical conditions; the subject must be prepared and predisposed in just the right way for the orisha's "personality" to take over. But in del Valle's story, the possessed, all mounted helter-skelter by Oggun, fight among themselves. Then, suddenly, they hear the sound of distant thunder: Chango is approach ing, so everyone calms down and starts to look for something to offer him. The Tata shouts: "jj4rangullon, atachaname! jEudofia aguareque abasi Efi! (Hear what I say: God in Heaven and I on Earth!)" (delValle 112). With its inaccuracies of content, "El tata'* broaches the topic of possession by constructing a case for abnormal (or animal) psychology The narrative at least conveys a confused sense of the mythical dimension of worship and suggests the cathartic possi bilities of possession. Because "La muerte del ecobio" (The death of the ecobio) relates the se quence of events in a Nanigo funeral, it lacks the elements of choice and confrontation generally present in literary prose fiction. However, it offers a quick, detailed study of the ritual procedures included in the Abakua cer emony to which I referred earlier. Other than the figure of the deceased, no one single character stands out in the narrative, a fact that gives the story an impersonal feeling, for the center of interest is the funeral ceremony, the itutu itself. The preparations for the funeral give the narrator occasion to rehearse some of the tenets of Naniguismo. First, we read that the deceased ecobio is Endillo, insue or first chief of the Usagara, one of the potencias of the Efi branch. Adding to his distinction, the wise Endillo descends from Nasako Namoremba, who was high priest of the Guanabecura Mendo

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141 o (kipterhir potencia in western Africa and one of the ancestors who, beneath the palm tree next to the river "Oldan," received the revelation of Dibo. In other words, Namoremba resembled the receivers of the fish Tanze, those who founded the first potencia in building the first sacred drum of the Abakua lineage, the Ekue. Dynastically, then, Endillo has received the secrets handed down by the Namoremba and upheld the ideals of the potencia. Ritual once again recalls the origins of the cult and reaffirms the claim of the origin on the members' lives. Accordingly, Endillo has taught that the neophyte "should embody the essential conditions of courage, loyalty, perseverance, unbreakable faith to carry out the will of his cuarto famba and a firm hand to grasp the icua rebesiene (knife), ready to be plunged into the enemy" (delValle 113-14). Since the sacrifice of Sikan and the fish, as it was in the beginning, the code of honor is a code of brotherhood, and of blood and vengeance, to the death. The funeral preparations follow a standard sequence, and some steps, the narrator explains, repeat those of the initiation ceremony. With great seri ousness, twelve nasako (sic) clear out two rooms and perform a limpieza in them, cleansing the four corners of each room with a rooster held by the legs, waving the tail like a broom. Trazas or ritual symbols are drawn; the rooster is released into the street. The nasako beat the walls with basil (acamcrcruru). A woman designated as the cascanecuarepresenting Sikanecua or Sikan, the only female allowed into the cuarto fambabrings black cloth to cover the table. With a silver cross and two long candles, the capilla or chapel is ready to admit the coffin of the revered ecobio (delValle, 115). Later, when the funeral party is walking to the cemetery, the twelve nasako carrying the nampc (deceased) murmur a first Abakua prayer of mourning, then a second prayer, one of "resignation and submission to the laws of Destiny," and then a third, advising "patience." Inside the cemetery, the burial rites begin. Into the tomb the nasako sprinkle a bottle of ico, aguardiente, and an herb and plant mixture identical to that used in the initiation ritual. The narrator lists the ingredients of the mixture: "bananas, yam, Guinea pepper, peanut, sesame, incense, dry wine, aguardiente, sugarcane, ginger, salt, star thistle, little pieces of firewood, yellow plaster, a bit of smoked hutia, white powder, holy water, basil, feverfew and charcoal." The ingredients together carry many and various connotations: the plaster is used in drawing the anaforuana ground-signs, the holy water signifies adherence to Catholic belief, the basil recalls the purifications or limpiezas; the white powder could be the eggshell (cascarilla), used to attract ache; the incense, aguardiente and hutia (an indigenous rodent, jutia) are frequently offered to the orishas. After

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thhrttilii o 14) a final responsory, the ceremony is ended and the ecobios disperse, each one thinking on the revered ecobio s teachings on loyalty and honor (del Valle 116, 117, 118). The code of honor among the members of an Efi potencia is once again examined, and this time critiqued, in "El ecobio traidor seria castigado" (The traitor would be punished). The story contains a lengthy, general history of the Abakua cult. Of ethnological interest as well are the details of another funeral ceremony, including songs and ritual. We read a detailed inventory of drumsincluding the bencomo and the cosillercmdcataloged with their cer emonial functions and other instruments: the ringing Uaibi llenbi, the maracas called eridundi, and the bell-like econ. All of which the protagonist Mufianga can play with skill and style (del Valle 102, 105-6, 104). Mufianga has been chosen by his cuarto famba in Matanzas to punish the betrayal of Abasongo.The story builds suspense not only by posing the ques tion of whether and how Mufianga will carry out his mission but also by establishing the enigma of what it is that Abasongo did to deserve such a punishment. In narrative retroversions, we learn that a red cowrie shell has identified Mufianga as the agent of the Ninigo "justice." Mufianga will chal lenge the betrayer to a fight with the icua rebesiene, for Abasongo has earned the right to defend himself by his past service. The formal challenge to Abasongo will turn the encounter into a test of manliness, for Mufianga will say, "Amicha urquiriquiqui chancobira masongo. That was the phrase that he would throw in the ears of that despicable eronquibd (effeminate) when he met up with him: 'You have to go with me because I'm a man"' (delValle 101). Mufianga has searched now in Havana for twenty days without finding the traitorous ecobio, and he has just received a piece of paper with draw ings on both sides. In the description of the drawings we recognize the look of the trazas, used for sending messages: "a triangle was drawn with yellow pencil, cut through by three arrows that divided the triangle in four parts and in each one of them was a circle; it represented obedience to his cuarto, the rubric of the insue or first chief; on the other side of the paper was the terrible symbol, warning him that the time limit for his mission was about to close: the grotesque skull with the bones partly bound up: Nampe! Death . with the number five: the days remaining" (del Valle 101).The Nafiigo symbols hold a mystical authority over Mufianga, reinforcing the fear for his own reputation, manhood, and even life should he fail in his mission. The first grafia in the drawing is a signature, identifying the leader as representa tive of the agrupamiento or association, the divided triangle symbolizing

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Ill o (Inter tair individuals in a group hierarchy. The other signpart icon, part convention alized symbol, recalling the pirate's skull-and-crossbonesreminds the ex ecutioner of the deadline. And what is written cannot be erased. But what was Abasongo s transgression? Munanga recalls an aforemen tioned fiesta de muertofuneral fiestafor the deceased insue of the Ebion Efo potencia. When the time came to pour the macumba into the grave, Abasongo, it was discovered, had drunk the whole bottle of the secret liquor, and it is of course unthinkable that one would "profane and betray the terrible insti tution" in such a manner. Fearing the consequences of his indiscretion, Abasongo took the first bus to Havana. Eventually, Munanga does catch up with the "traitor" in a bar in Marianao; to Munanga s astonishment, a smil ing, elegantly dressed Abasongo tells him he makes a living dancing for the tourists in a cabaret. Munanga recalls his crime to him and the fight to the death; Abasongo replies, "Cut it out, Munanga. The times change and the two of us can live like the rich whites." Abasongo even offers a cash repara tion. An outraged Munanga, true to the code of the cuarto famba, stabs the traitorous ecobio in the heart and escapes (delValle 106, 107, 108-9). The last story of 1 /4 fambd begins by relating the arrival of the giant black man named Seboruco, whose name gives the story its title, at a solar where women are washing clothes. Seboruco has returned from la chirona, prison. Looking for his former mistress, La China, he forces La Abuela ("the Grand mother") to tell him with whom La China has taken up. La Abuela tells Seboruco, "She lives with rich white in Almendares district" (delValle 195). Having established the story's enigma with that scene, the narrative takes the reader back to a time when the licenciado Angel Gutierreza university graduate or lawyernicknamed Seboruco ("Dolt") was a feared and dan gerous personality known throughout the "popular masses" of Havana. He is "[u]gly as a gorilla," and a Nanigo: "The potencia haniga of which he was insue or first chief, was proud of his command; he performed wonders with the icud rebesiene, liquidating a Christian as quick as a rooster can crow.... He was familiar with jail and with the Island of Pines. ... A stab-wound, given without a second thought, more or less consequential, always turned out to be the reason. He owed his recent sentence to a punishment inflicted on an iyamba or second chief of the famba 'Ecorio Efo' for opening his beak too much in a matter of daring" (delValle 196). With this background, delValle once again links a protagonist with Ortiz's Afro-Cuban hampa and the Abakua code of conduct. After an angry meditation in the room in which he used to make love to La China, Seboruco, with revenge on his mind, arranges for his clothes to be

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IbhrlMii o 151 retrieved from the casa de padrino or pawnshop, and goes to the chalet where La China lives with Seboruco's rival, "a councilman of Havana, very fond of 'cinnamon' [canela]." From outside the chalet he sees herbut wait, there's something wrong: instead of dancing the rumba as she did so well with Seboruco, La China is dancing the mambo, a dance that rumba lovers con sider to be "stiff and unspirited."That, and La China's modern dances, would make Seboruco the laughingstock of his friends, were they together again. Here, in Seboruco's judgment, the rumba has a positive value ("only the rumba interpreted the soul of the race") and the mambo a negative one. Having suddenly lost his interest in La China, Seboruco spits, lights a cigar and leaves, "completely at ease, whistling his favorite tune" (del Valle 197 9 8). The conclusion of del Valle's last Nafiigo story thus frustrates our expec tation of a bloody encounter as it suggests the obsolescence and irrelevance of a Nafiigo society that continues to live in the past. With this last satiric rendition of life in the hampa, the Abakua cycle in Afro-Cuban prose narrative closes with a last depiction of the Nafiigo culture as a macho world of slang, sex, mysticism, vendettas, superstition, fashion, and barrio politics, all reminiscent of Ortiz's and Carpentier's earlier studies. Following Ortiz and Carpentier, del Valle has drawn the myth of Ekue out of Barnet's "heaven" and preserved it in scenes of ritual sacrifice and violent talk and even more violent action among the sons of the seer Nasako: he who ordered the sacrifice of Sikanecua and inscribed the marks of the leop ard on the skin of a talking fish.

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J Rc-narfeiiKi the Baitn Cnter Cotorra viti colord pa afamd a su padre [The parrot dresses in red to bring fame to his father]. Lydia Cabrera, Refranes de negros viejos In the preceding chapters I have advanced the thesis that religious belief and practice rely for their form and meaning on systems of symbols, signifying matrices each focused on the privileged metaphor(s) that are "written" or "read" under the assumption that they manifest the presence of the divine, personified as God or gods, spirits or ancestors, the force of ache or the forces of nature. Afro-Cuban literature, often reiterating and reelaborating the centering "metaphors of divinity" (SAS 8), has displayed the discursive, ritual, and institutional operations that organize and produce religious expe rience. My analyses of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Cubanist texts have moreover considered the manner in which symbolic centers are elaborated and overdetermined by other symbols within the discursive space of a religious culture's communicative practices and how those centers are subject, in the evolution of Afro-Cuban religious culture, to displacement by other center ing figures. The center will hold, it has an ordering function, but the semiosis of transculturated systems themselves necessitates that certain decenterings and reorderings occur in the normal operations of each religion's culture. Disquisitions on the "Lucumi religious system," above all those of Romulo Lachatanere, have proclaimed the centrality of that system as a structuring paradigm among Afro-Cuban religions, as providing a ritual and mythologi cal framework for all Cuban religions of West African origins. This has not been entirely the case for alternative Afro-Cuban religious traditions, how ever, which present "subcountercultural" responses to what they regard as a Lucumi orthodoxy and which offer what they consider as more effective

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kMRirkiii tit If iti (titer o IB II. A win franOMIniii IWI. means of spiritual development. Indeed, the earliest extended treatment in narrative fiction of Afro-Cuban religion, Carpentier's jEcue-Yamba-O!, depicted a subculture whose system was not so much Lucumi as Abakua, revealing the manner in which the Nafiigos placed not the orishas at the center of their worship but rather the Ekue, the silent drum fetish, symbolic of the origins of the cult. Also in the mid-1930s, Lydia Cabrera was writing the stories that would comprise her Cuentos negros de Cuba (Black stories of Cuba, 1938), sto ries that told not only of Chango, Yemaya, and Ochun but of spirits and demons from the Kongo mythologies. In the Cuban version of the Bantu religions, known by the names Regla Conga, Regla de Palo, or Palo Monte Mayombe, the privileged object of worship, or its dominant metaphor of divinity, is the magic nganga "charm" or prenda, by means of which the mayombero priest may communicate with and control a dead spirit who becomes the ghostly agent of magical operations. The epigraph for this chapter refers to that spirit-controlling, thoughttransmitting nganga-cauldron, central and centering symbol of the Palo Monte religion. Possessed through the medium of the nganga, the palero himself becomes a medium through whom the spirit, also called nganga, is said to speak. In a trance, the palero, parrotlike, utters someone else's words,

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1(4 o (interfile words he does not necessarily understand. This mystic ventriloquism makes sense of the proverb, translated from Cabrera s Spanish gloss: "The parrot... possessed by the nganga, dresses in red to fight and overcome and bring fame to his father." That is, the palero "dresses" in the colors of a language authored by a spiritual "father," the ancestor or nganga-spirit. Since the lan guage of the other speaks through the palero s mouth, his empowerment through the divination ritual entails his very accession to the paternal word: by defeating the father he exalts himself. And yet this psittacine psychology may justify a reading of the proverb against the grain: the metaphor takes on another significance when we recall that the parrot creates no original utter ances but only repeats those generated by other speakers. Although the palero feels enlightened and strengthened in his trance, believing himself a channel for the supernatural voice that talks through him, it seems more likely that he, like the parrot, cotorra, mimics the previous enunciations of other speakers, or joins the pieces of other enunciations together into an utterance that is taken for truth. The parroted paternal word is the word of the religion's patriarchs. Yet this word consists of more than the doxa of a religious culture. Reli gion, by its operation of centering, as William James knew, touches upon the unconscious or subliminal regions of the psyche normally covered over by the "hubbub of the waking life" (237). Unspoken knowledge and internal ized, unconscious codes must form the subtext that speaks through the palero medium's word, just as the speaker must produce a meaningful utterance before the parrot can imitate the speaker. On another level, the conversions and realignments by which the "orthodox" Lucumi system is transformed by a Congo supplement are effected by an act of recentering the field of consciousness. This recentering, by the mediation of the nganga, accesses a language of the unconscious into play, but for the end of empowerment in accordance with the codes and constraints of the Bantu-based religious insti tution. In possession as in dreaming, symbolization both expresses and masks the latent thought, saving the divine word from silence while giving voice to the father s prophetic-authoritative language. Bastu Background The name Palo Monte in Cuba serves to designate all of the Bantu-derived religions, those also known as the Reglas Congas, and its name denotes the "sticks" or "branches" of the "mountain" used in the making of the nganga. Africanist terminologies signal the origins of the religion. The culture of the Bakongo people, who speak the Kikongo languages, includes Kongo art and religion. The

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Re-irkin tie lti(eiier o 155 Kongo, spelled with a K to distinguish the nation from the colonial Belgian Congo, present-day Zaire, are a people who inhabit a broad sub-Saharan area extending from the southern part of Cameroon through northern Angola to Mozambique on the eastern side of southern Africa. Kongo once designated as well what is today the modern republic of Congo-Brazzaville, whose nonKongo peoples include the Teke. Kongo civilization was also established in northern Angola, Bas-Zaire, and Gabon (FS 103). The Africans taken in sla very from this general regionthe Teke, Suku, Yaka, Punu Bakongo, and Angoladiscovered affinities among their languages and religious beliefs. The above orthographic and geographic distinctions made by Thompson jus tify the use I have made thus far of "Congo/a" with a C to designate the Kongo-based religions that have taken root in Cuba, since the Kongo-based culture there is called "conga" or "bantu" (CA 1:129). I will use the terms Bantu, Palo Monte (Mayombe), and Congo/a more or less interchangeably in the discussion that follows. Records of the Congo religion in Cuba go back before the nineteenth century. In 1796, reports Carpentier, to give only one illustration, a magusking named Melchor ruled the Cabildo de Congos Reales in Havana (MC 290). Reglas Congas have appeared most strongly on the eastern end of Cuba, alongside the Dahomey-Ewe-Fon-based Reglas Araras, in Santiago and Guantanamo, but their themes and symbols seem to have spread throughout the island. The various Congo religions, commonly referred to under the rubric of Palo Monte Mayombe, comprise la Regla Conga, la Regla Biyumba, la Regla Musunde, la Regla Quirimbaya, la Regla Vrillumba, and la Regla Kimbisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje (that is, "of the Holy Christ of the Good Journey") (CA 3:130; Perez Sarduy and Stubbs 301). As stated above, the Bantu cults emphasize "working" with a spirit of the dead, denomi nated, like the container of the spirit-calling medium, the nkisi (plural minkisi), or nganga. In the popular imagination, the Regla Conga or Palo Monte is tied to the idea of "witchcraft," and this brujcria de congo includes formulas and spells for working with the dead, "trabajos con muertos" (MS 14).The palero priest is also called Tata Nganga, and paleras and mayomberas work magic as well. It is the mayombero or palera who catches and controls the spirit, often called the nganga-pcrro or "nganga dog," in the nganga-receptacle (EQT 7), which will be described and explicated later in this chapter. Aside from the symbolic paraphernalia of the religion, Bastide has ar gued, the "cultural focal point" of the Bantu peoples in the New World has been "folklore" rather than religion. The former, reasons Bastide, survived because during the colonial period the Bantu slaves, valued for physical

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U o (lipttrfift strength, were put to work on the plantations, out where it was more diffi cult than in the urban environments to regroup and reestablish the African cults (106). Yet the widespread continuance of specifically Bantu-based reli gious practices on the island, recorded by the literature on the subject, would seem to contradict Bastide's assertion unless his category of religion (as op posed to "folklore") is intended to refer exclusively to a more or less cohe sive whole composed of the kind of discourse practices we have been exam ining thus far. Bastide's assertion relies on the premise that the cultural deprivation and underdevelopment imposed on the Bantu plantation slaves disorganized the system of their religious practice, causing the Bantu-based religions to disin tegrate into ritual and folkloric fragments. Consistent with this premise, it is generally acknowledged that the Reglas Congas have no elaborately devel oped set of deities that one could call a "pantheon," and that they have there fore looked to the Lucumi religion to give form to their mythologies with its narratives and iconography of the orisha-saints. Due to their reliance on other systems, especially the Lucumi, for structural frameworks, the Reglas Congas are often called religiones cruzadas, "crossed" religions (EQT 9, 84). In grafting their ritual onto Dahomey-Ewe-Fon or Yoruba ceremony since the begin nings of Cuban culture, the Congos and their descendants and followers have created what Bastide refers to as a "double series of correspondences" (see 106-7). That tendency to syncretizing assimilation, along with the afore mentioned conditions of work to which the Congos were subjected and the pressures under which all neo-African religions were forced to adapt, ac counts for the partial disappearance of Bantu sects, at least as cohesive insti tutions, in the Americas. The Bantu spirits who arrived in the New World thus fused with the Catholic saints on the one hand and with the Yoruba orishas and the Fon loas on the other. In the Mayombe cruzado practiced in Cuba, believers chant to the orishas of the Yoruba pantheon, identified either by Bantu, Catholic, or Yoruba names: Insancio is Chango or Santa Barbara; Nsambi, Sambia, or Asambia is Almighty God or Olodumare; Kisimba is St. Francis of Assisi or Orumila (Bastide 109, 11 l).The dead, los muertos, are also called to intervene in human affairs. There is no clear demonstration of this syncretism in Cuban prose fiction to my knowledge, but such admixing and amalgamation accounts for Co lombian author Zapata Olivella's synthesis of Bantu liturgy and ancestor-wor ship with Yoruba mythology in his novels Chango, el gran putas (meaning, roughly, Chango, the great motherfucker, 1983), a section of which I will examine in chapter 6.

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Rc-iirkiif tie Inti Cuter o 157 Whereas Congo mythology in Cuba assimilated the Lucumi myth, and rivalries between santeros and paleros exist, the Lucumi and Congo religions continue to complement one another in ritual practice, with the cult of the nganga remaining foremost in Palo Monte and often incorporated into the individual practice of orisha followers (Cuervo Hewitt and Luis 9; CA 3:12 9-30). The crossing of symbolic elements between those religions once again displays a process of decentering and recentering by which the "freeplay" of the symbol system, tending otherwise toward fixity by the re liance on a presumably transcendental center or structure, is set into a course of mutual transformation between religious systems. An Afro-Cuban religious "semiotics" would have to account for this sort of slippage of signifiers from their referents and their tendency to link up with other signifying chains. To employ Derrida's terms, a "process of substitution" subjects deities to re placement or modification by other deities within the same group or from other groups. The lack of referent or "transcendental signified" permits this displacement along the series of signifiers, although it also opens up signifi cation to the violence of religious rivalry and antagonism (see Derrida, D 89). In James Figarola's theory of "multiple representation," which he ap plies to Regla de Ocha, Palo Monte, and Vaudou, such slippage is considered the norm: "the representations have the capability of free movement, of in creasing or of decreasing and of establishing relations with the rest of the exterior world, independendy of the behavior of the represented object" (3 2). This "free movement" of signs that establish relations with the systems external to their "own" system accounts for the transference and translation of signs across systemic boundaries as well as for the adaptability of the sys tems themselves. In the light of these reflections on religious sign systems and their mutations, a study of Palo Monte ritual, doctrine, and myth, including their treat ment in literary works, reveals the way that Bantu-based religion has en riched Afro-Cuban literature and religious culture with its instrumental and expressive language. The eminent Afro-Cuban writer of pocsia negrista, Nicolas Guillen, exploits the onomatopoeic sounds and rhythm of Bantu language in the poem en titled "Sensemaya." This "Canto para matar una culebra""Song for killing a snake"first appeared in Motivos de son in 1930 and relies on some of the same imitative magic that characterizes many of the ebbos or spells of Palo Monte. The tradition of the snake-killing dance, performed in the comparsas or street processions of Epiphany, probably originated in the eighteenth cen tury (Barreda 15). The rhythms of the poem rehearse the movement of a

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in o (lipier Hie dance that imitates as it "invokes" the presence of the snake and at the same time produces a charm to ward off its threat. Whereas the repetitive verses exploit the rhythmic, musical values of the words, semantic values also con nect the verses with Kikongo language. A few definitions suggest the poten tial impression of the poem on a reader familiar with the vocabulary. Sensemaya: a spirit represented at times by a snake. Mayombe: once, a slave brought from the Kongo region; now, a representative "Congo" religion. Bombc: a popular Antillean black dance, such as the Bombeserre of Martinique; or, a personalized drum of Ghanaian origin, with female name and sexual attributes; or a dance such as the bomba held on Sundays, with rhythm by a lead dancer, with spec tators singing responses in chorus, playing on two drums and two maracas, and beating on a bench with two sticks (DALC 424, 310, 81). The following sample from "Sensemaya" gives a sense of the poem s incantatory effects, produced through rhythmic repetition, as well as its mi metic effects, produced by exclamations and onomatopoeia: j Mayombebombemayombe! j Mayombebombemayombe! j Mayombebombemayombe! Tu le das con el hacha, y se muere: jdale ya! jNo le des con el pie, que te muerde, no le des con el pie, que se va! Sensemaya, la culebra, sensemaya. Sensemaya, con sus ojos, sensemaya. Sensemaya, con su lengua, sensemaya. . i Mayombebombemayombe! Sensemaya, la culebra . j Mayombebombemayombe! Sensemaya, no se mueve . j Mayombebombemayombe! j Sensemaya, se murio! (Guillen 68-70)l The ritual act of invoking Sensemaya s eyes and tongue and death in words "means" (or imitates or anticipates) killing the snake in reality. Guillen s poem

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Re-urliii tie toti (cuter o 10 demonstrates the "magical" power of the word as name or naming, a con cept that is signified in the Bantu word nommo, which bears certain similari ties with the Lucumi ache. The creative nommo literally means "name" in Bantu, but also "word," verbum. It connotes the identification drawn between the person or thing and the name of the person or thing (see APA 1 8). Nam ing the snake, one calls the snake itself to presence and commands it. To expand on this point a bit, the Bantu concept of nommo I would add is central to Edward Kamau Brathwaite's theory of African expression in Carib bean literature. The word or name carries a power to change reality, to trans form life, for nommo is itself the life force flowing through all things, that effects changes in things in and through the words that name those things (Brathwaite, Development 237; see alsoTempels 44 and Jahn, Muntu 1 24). Myriad depictions of verbal art as performance in Caribbean literature attest to the power of nommo, whose sacred potency comes across in scenes of court room drama, storytelling, political speeches, divination, conjuration, rid dling, calypso, and "wordthrowing." Such performances manifest Brath waite's "magical/miraculous" conception of the word (Brathwaite, "African Presence" 123-26). To give an impression of nommo s power, but in Lucumi terms, Cabrera records the statement that in order to conquer another person s love, one must steal that person's angel de la auarda or protective personal spirit. One does so by intoning that person's real name, which is often secret. "In those names that one does not say," Cabrera's informant tells her, "there is some thing like the trace, essence of a life. The true name and the person, they are the same thing.The name is something very sacred" (M 506).The magical power of language, especially in naming and in verbal performing, assumes that language and reality are identical or at least coextensive in some sense and that to work upon the name means to work upon the thing or person named. As these linguistic operations suggest, and contrary to Yorubo-centric stereotypings by Palo Monte's enemies, Congo ritual procedures display an intriguing efficaciousness. Distinguishing themselves from Lucumi practice by emphasizing their magical communication with deceased spirits, muertos or minkisi, the paleros know the right words and ritual formulas to effect transformations in the material and spiritual worlds. Consistent with the Congo focus on communications with spirits, practitioners of both Regla de Ocha and Palo Monte "borrow" techniques from Cuban spiritualism for I heir dealings with the dead. This latter tradition, we note in passing, has been strongly influenced by the European spiritualism popularized by Allan Kardek

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IM o (interfile (SMD 36). Still, despite such borrowings and adaptations, the center of the Bantu practice remains the nganga and the magic done with it. Crossing the Ceater Anthropologist MischaTitiev has proposed a dichotomizing contrast between magic and religion applicable to the classification of the above mentioned Afro-Cuban practices. For Titiev, religious practice may be defined as com munal and calendrical; magic, on the other hand, as individual-oriented and occasional. Calendrical ceremonies function by bonding individuals into a cohesive social unit, whereas magic comes to the aid of the client, resolving crises and fulfilling desires. In religion as Titiev defines it, problem-solving critical practices may still be performed at the behest of individuals but are considered nonetheless to serve the interests of the group (284). Yoruba-based religious practice in Cuba, as distinguished from the "magic" practiced in Palo Monte, accordingly tends to emphasize the communal or social aspects of worship, which fall into the category of the recurrent and calendrical mode of temporal organization. In this sense, religious practice relies on the institution such as it exists as an organization of mutually sup porting practitioners. Magic as practiced in Palo Monte, on the other hand, tends to respond to problems, needs, or emergencies of a more personal nature. It involves manipulating or compelling the spirits to carry out, on request and through ritual formulas, the will of priest and client. It may also degenerate into formulaic conjurations lacking in religious content in disre gard of its communal context. In the subjectivist, magical view of the palero, the image of the center and of centering inscriptions may function as a mirror to an image of the monadic individual. What is centered in this relation is a perspective of the individual as set on the path of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. This larger frame work replicates the rising and setting movement of the sun, a movement the Kongo saw symbolized in the spirals of the Kodya shell (FS 104, 106). The imaging of the center also brings to mind the memory of the ancient Bakongo capital, Mbanza Kongo, built on a hilltop. In Cuba, this site of origins was reestablished, in Creole speech, by the Bantu renaming of Havana as Mbonsa Bona (CA 3:130 n. 3). The historical or nostalgic center of Bantu culture is homologous to a metaphysical center recalled into being by a form of writing on the ground, the design called the tendwa nzd kongo, upon which the nganga may be placed in rituals. This pictogram of Kongo and Angolan origin resembles the Haitian veves configured about the central post, or potcau mitan, supporting the roof

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Re-marluof the Bieti Ceiter o MI o o-o o Hike toimiiUm ir Bti-Kow asmrai. of theVaudou temple, the houmfort.The design also has affinities to the Lucumi grafias, the anaforuana of the Naiiigos, and to the pontos riscados of Bahian Candomble in Brazil. Like these other graphic emblems, the nucleating lines in the Palo Monte ground-designs represent the pulling of spiritual forces inward to the center while extending outward toward the four cardinal points of the universe, as Thompson explains in his Flash of the Spirit. For, in the be ginning in Mbanza Kongo, "images of centering prevailed. It was a world profoundly informed by a cosmograman ideal balancing of the vitality of the world of the living with the visionariness of the world of the dead. Charms and medicines were constandy produced in the search for the realization of a perfect vision in the less than perfect world of the living" (FS 189, 102). The Bantu-Kongo cosmogram, given to humans by the Supreme Deity Nsambi Mpungu, takes the form of a cross, the yowa, on the ends of which are drawn little circles that together symbolize the four moments of the sun, or the four cardinal points: noon is at the top, midnight at the bottom, dawn and sunset at the right and left ends. The revolving arrows trace a path around the intersection of the axes (FS 108). Directed in counterclockwise motion, the arrows of the tendwa nza kongo show the sun revolving about the body of the inner ellipse of earth s water. Those arrows also symbolize the path of reincarnation. The horizontal line divides the upper from the lower: above the line the earth is "the mountain of the living," ntoto; beneath the line is "white clay" or "the mountain of the dead," mpemba. The vertical axis is the path linking the two worlds. The zenith therefore signifies north, God, and the male principle. The nadir signifies south, the dead, and the female principle. Thompson adds that the ground

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Ml o (inter fin drawings and nkisi markings often include symbols fromYoruba iconogra phy. The elliptical tendwa nza kongo inscribes a vision of wholeness: the totality life and death and the cycle of reincarnation (FS 108-9). The ritual act of drawing the cosmogram, as traza or nganga-marking, is accompanied by the chanting of sacred songs, mambos, intended to bring down the divine power in the form of a spirit, simbi (EQT 10). With song, the centering cosmogram is inscribed in two instances: outside, on the ground where one takes an oath; and within, in the centerpiece of the Bantu system of magic and medicine, the aforementioned nkisi or nganga charm, whose construction I will elaborate on in the next section. This Kongo custom of "smging-and-drawing" (iyimbila yesona) aims at activating the spirit-control ling charm (FS 108-10, 110-14). Contajning the Center Nganga designates the fundamento or fundament of the Bantu religion in Cuba. As noted previously, the name nganga refers either to the small cauldron that holds the spirit or to the spirit itself. Kongo myth recalls the first nkisi or nganga, named Funza. From this nkisi, represented afterward in the twisted roots included in some magic cauldrons and bundle sacks, issued all the minkisi of the world. Afterward, the nkisi served as refuge or prison to the soul of a returned ancestor or of some spirit attached to this world. The Congo nganga itself is therefore a figure of "multiple representation." All told, it represents: the spirit it calls or controls; the first nganga named Funza; its own objective being as a cauldron full of magic objects; its interior graphic sign, drawn on the bottom of the cauldron; and its exterior graphic sign, the cosmogram signifying the nganga's centering force (SMD 18-19).The syn onyms and metonyms of the nganga are manifold as well: in Cuba and the United States, it is also known as prenda, suggesting a pawn or guaranty and its related economic obligations, or a jewel, or some other valued article. Alternatively, the nganga spirit may be kept in a sack called jolongo or macuto (EQT 82-83). Nkisi means "charm" but also "positive magic," as opposed to "negative magic" or ndoki. Positive magic is usually the work of the nganga cristiana or so-called Christian nganga, which is "mounted" or formed with holy water as one of its ingredients. A ndoki on the other hand proceeds from the nganga judiathe so-called Jewish nganga (GA 3:144, 146). Finally, the powerful Cuban nganga called Zarabanda, associated with Oggun, Ochosi, and Eleggua, derives its name from the Kongo nsala-banda, the cloth used by Bakongo in their minkisi. Bastide identifies Zarabanda as a form of "magic"

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Rc-Mriuaf tbe Biiti Cnter o Iti originating in Havana from the convergence of Yoruba and Congo practices. The Zarabanda concentrates this magic in a metal cauldron holding bones, plants, and the prayer to Oggiin, who is known as Zarabanda in Congo cul ture (FS 110, 112, 118, 121, 131; CA 3:183). The nganga furthermore may "engender" other ngangas, its "nganga hijas" or "daughters" made from materials or powers drawn from the ma&it nganga, the mother. Relying on the "curious mechanism" that James Figarola curiously names "retroalimentation," the "mother" in her turn draws suste nance from the "daughters" when these are fed the expected amount of sacrificial blood (SMD 19). A fascinating, complex lore of "making the nganga" has been recorded by Cabrera,Thompson, Gonzalez-Wippler, Castellanos and Castellanos, and Garcia Cortez. For the purposes of the following reconstruc tion I will rely mainly on Cabrera's and Thompson's writings. Cabrera's informant Baro (one of a number in El montc) revealed that to build a powerful nganga one must go to the cemetery and obtain pieces of a corpse because a spirit, or fumbi, adheres to its body, even after death. The skull, called kiyumba, is especially prized because it is the seat of intelligence, "substancia espiritual." A synecdochic logic obtains here. When the kiyumba is lacking, another piece of skeleton will serve, even one as small as a pha lange, because "it represents and 'is worth' the totality of the body" (M 121). The ceremony of the removal as narrated by Baro merits closer reading for its metaphoric implications: "Once in the cemetery, the padre [or Palo Monte priest or ngangulero], sprinkling cane liquor in a cross over a grave, will take away, 'if he can,' the head, the kiyumba of a cadaver, 'with a brain, where the fumbi thinks things, fingers, toes, ribs and long leg bones [canillas] so he can run.' With these remains wrapped in a black cloth, the ngangulero goes to his house to 'make the deal with the deceased' since it is not so easy to make it in the cemetery itself." This procedure is best carried out in the light of a new or full moon due to the close connection between the dead souls and the moon, Ochukwa: the two come into their fullest "vital energies" during those lunar phases. Conversely, it should be kept in mind that the vital forces are weakest in the declining phases, the dwindling crescent called Ochukwa aro. Children born under a full moon, it is known, are "strong," but those born under a waning moon will be expected to be "slow" Furthermore, children presented to the new moon some forty days after birth are strength ened by the ritual (M 118, 119-20, 122). The ngangulero, having obtained those prized remains from the cem etery, returns home to create a nganga by combining the bones with other

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1(4 o (lipter fift prescribed specific ingredients. First, however, "the padre nganga, followed by the godson and also attended by the mayordomo, stretches out on the floor. The mayordomo covers him with a sheet, and between four lighted candles, next to the remains, invokes the spirit that takes possession of the padre and speaks." Around the supine padre nganga, seven small mounds of gunpow der are lit; if they explode simultaneously, this is a sign that the dead spirit accepts the offer to speak. The ngangulero then writes the spirit s name on a piece of paper, which he places at the bottom of the inscribed cauldron with several coins.These coins constitute the "payment" to the spirit for his or her "sale" to the ngangulero.The priest then either cuts a vein in his own arm to "feed" the spirit some blood, or else sacrifices a rooster for the purpose. Then begins the process of constructing the nganga. Into the cauldron go the cemetery remains and four handfuls of earth taken from the four corners of the deceaseds grave, along with other things (M 122-23). The nganga-cauldronitself a synecdochic representation of the nganga components, a metonymic representation of its contentsbecomes charged with the superterrenal power of its combined ingredients. These include rooster blood, the Cuban ant called bibijagua, feathers from the aura tinosa or turkey buzzard, and stones (SMD 19, 63). The ngangulero or ngangulera may also introduce Spanish coins called reales; sticks from twenty-seven different species of tree; chili peppers, ginger, garlic and other spices; a hollow piece of sugarcane, in which is sealed amounts of sand, seawater and mer cury; the skull of a woodpecker or buzzard; possibly the body of a black dog (M 123). Another principal ingredient is the ache-filled branches of the siguarraya, sacred tree owned by Chango, the "Siete-Rayos" ("Seven Light ning-Bolts") of the Palo Monte pantheon (EQT 24). "The brains, which have already become a hard black paste, [go] to one side of the dog's head and the jaw bone" (M 123). Once constructed, the nganga has to be buried in an anthill, where the characteristics of the ants will be "absorbed" into the charm and bring out its power. A transfer of qualities, following a metonymic logic of signification, operates once again in this step. As Cabrera writes, "Our blacks attribute to these destructive, laborious and indefatigable ants supernatural intelligence and wisdom. 'Bibijagua never rests, doesn't sleep, from night to day: bus tling about at all hours. For her there's no Sunday or feast day' With the industrious bibijaguantiawothe nganga acquires the same extraordinary aptitude for work, assimilating her qualities of laboriousness and persever ance. It learns to demolish and to construct. To demolish what is another's, in order to construct its own" (M 130).

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Re-iirkintl(liiti((it(r o M5 Strengthened by the bibijagua's strength and the nganga's potent ingredients, the muerto or kiyumba spirit contained and controlled within the nganga will come to resemble the Levi-Straussian "mana," the privileged signifier of Polynesian magic available to attach itself to the visible or pal pable signifier manipulated by the shaman (seeTempels 53). Like mana, the Afro-Cuban nganga-spirit serves the priest's intention, whether to bring bless ings or curses upon another, through a manipulation of symbols. This effect is possible due to the totalizing impulse evident in and expressed by the furnishing of the nganga-cauldron, the kiyumba s home. Gonzalez-Wippler explains it in these terms: "The [Palo Monte] mayombero believes that his nganga is like a small world that is entirely dominated by him. The kiyumba rules over all the herbs and the animals that live inside the nganga with it. The mayombero in turn rules the kiyumba, who obeys his orders like a faith ful dog. The kiyumba is the slave of the mayombero and it is always waiting inside the cauldron or the macuto to carry out his orders" (S 1 29). In a similar vein, James Figarola calls the nganga a "scenic space" for magic operations because it is the screen on which is projected the imagined con tact of powers and entities, the stage on which the Palo Monte priest meets with the spirit of the dead he would control or direct (SMD 19-20). The Kongo nkisi named Nsumbu, reports Thompson, "is believed to represent the world in miniature," but any nkisi is "informed by this metaphor of cosmos miniaturized." In all its diverse forms, the nkisi mirrors and gathers in the macrocosm, as does the name of a famous nganga of Marianao, called "Tree-of-the-Forest-Seven-Bells-Turns-the-World-Round-the-Midnight-Cemetery" (FS 119, 123). Castellanos and Castellanos' informant confirms the microcosmic aspect of the nganga, where "all the forces of nature join, a 'nature in sum'"; it is indeed "'the whole world in miniature and with which you dominate'" (CA 3:145). Object of power and dread, the nganga, one could say, to quote Zizek's words from a different but comparable context, functions as theater, phantasmic space or screen that serves "for the projec tion of desires" (Zizek 8-9). What is generally desired are effects produced in other people. In Santeria's panaldo cleansing, which shows definite Congo characteristics, malign spirits may be exorcised with the passing of a rooster over the body of the afflicted individual. The rooster, now thought to carry the contagion in its own body, is placed inside the Palo Monte macuto sack, in which it is buried in the ground (SR 105-6). If on the other hand harm or malice is intended toward others, the nganga or macuto may be called upon for effecting the spell, called bilongo or kdembo. The victims themselves, unconsciously subjected, by be-

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\U o (inter fro lief or psychic "self-alienation," to the dominion of the magic signifier, will confer power upon the malediction and act accordingly, whether by falling ill or suffering an "accident" or otherwise causing harm to themselves. They take the nganga seriously, and their belief often produces results. A not-so-serious play on nganga-description appears in the section of Cabrera Infante's Trcs tristcs tigres titled "The Death of Trotsky Related by Various Cuban Writers, Years Lateror Before."The section consists of a series of clever parodies of Cuban writing styles. By these parodies, Cabrera Infante exaggerates and thus bares the artifice by which celebrated Cuban authors have achieved particular verbal effects. The targets of his parodies include Carpentier, Lydia Cabrera, Novas Calvo, and others. In Cabrera Infante's hands, their styles are made to report on the death of the Russian advocate of inter nationalist revolution. Relevant to our discussion of Bantu-based religion in modern narrative, the section dedicated to Lydia Cabrera is titled "H indisime bebe la moskuba que los consagra bolchevikua" ("The Abakua neophyte drinks the moskuba liquor that the Bolshevik consecrates").The narrative of the parody, concerned with a nganga, begins with the following paragraph replete with italicized exologisms presented in apposition or parenthesis, af ter Cabrera's manner: She had already forgotten the refusal of Baro, the babalocha of old Chacha (Caridad), his mother from Santiago, when she asked to borrow his nganga to do him a spell [trabajo] a la guampara [or uemba, a kind of spell], the day than the chief of the potencia or orisha arrived bringing nothing less that the sacromagic and terrible cauldron (olla walabo) hidden inside a black sackmmunwbo futi. The spirit (wije) that dwelled in it had manifested to her that it was all right (tshevere) because the <>if she so desired. Burufutu nmobutu! (Cabrera Infante, TTT 235) What was arcane or awkward in Cabrera becomes riotous wordplay in Cabrera Infante. The plethora of italicized Bantu or Lucumi words enriches or clutters the Spanish language, the tangled thicket of bilingual references and insider allusions rendering the passage unintelligible to the noninitiate or aleyo. References to the nganga or prenda fetish are incongruous with the histori-

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Re-ncrkiifl tkc Imte Center o 1(1 cal account of Trotsky's assassination in Coyoacan but convey the sense of poly-glossia and code-switching customary to Cabrera's Afro-Cuban dis course. A glossary full of nearly useless definitions and mutually referring crossreferences completes Cabrera Infante's parody of Cabrera. But whereas that parody performs a certain demystification of religious and politicoreligious value, it also expresses a certain pleasure in the exuberant productivity of language. Despite its close resemblance to nonsense at times, Cabrera's lan guage is displayed as a tour de force of multilingual musicality, an amalgam of magic and rationalism, of syntactic rhythms and lexical color. Cabrera Infante s parody is also a tribute to Cabrera. A Hierarchy o| Spirits As stated earlier, the Reglas Congas lack a complex pantheon of their own due in part to the centrality of nganga-worship and in part to their relation of dependency to the Regla Lucumi for its mythological structure. Bantubased religion nonetheless sustains a transculturated hierarchy of spirits, each called mpungu or santo, and collectively known as the kimpungulu. The kimpungulu is variable in its composition and organization and adaptable to different social and personal circumstances, but it includes spirits of ancestors, spirits of the dead, and spirits of nature. The name of one kind of ancestor-spirit is kinyula nfuiri-ntoto; a ghost or specter is named Musanga; a dead spirit, returned after dying twice is a simbi; one who protects, ndundu. The nature spirits are said to dwell in the bodies of trees, animals, and water. The water-spirit is Nkita-Kunamasa, and the river-spirit is Mburi. In the snake called majd dwells Nkisi Mboma (CA 3:137). Reinforced by its syncretization with the set of Lucumi orishas, that hier archy begins at the top with the supreme deity of the Kongos, the creator called Nsambi or Nzambi, Insambi, or Sambia Mpungu. The doctrine and myth of Nsambi, as Castellanos and Castellanos note, were influenced by the monotheism of Portuguese missionaries who succeeded in converting Bakongos of the Gold Coast in the fifteenth century. The Kongo king, Nzinga a Knuwu, and his son were among the converts, and the Kongo capital, Mbanza, was renamed San Salvador. As the supreme god, Nsambi became omniscient: he "sees a little ant in the darkest night" (RNV 9).The anthropogonic myths recount the way that Nsambi, like God of the Old Testament, created the first man and woman directly by his own powers, unlike the Lucumi Olodumare who entrusted the creation of humanity to his interme-

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ftt o (hipttrfiit diaries, Obatala and Oduddua. These aspects and developments explain why Bantu religion already displayed characteristics of Catholicism upon its ar rival in Cuba (CA 3: 130-31). As mentioned earlier, contact and intercommunication with the Lucumi religion established correspondences between the orishas and the Congo kimpungulu, giving the latter more definition and more affinity with the Catholic saints. Beneath Nsambi in the hierarchy of mpungus, but above hu mankind, one finds the Congo Nkuyo Watariamba, equated with Ochosi, who is San Norberto. Nkuyu Nfinda or Lucero Mundo is the Lucumi Eleggua as well as the Catholic Nino Jesus de Atocha and San Antonio de Padua (CA 3: 138). Given these numerous crossings, it is not surprising that many mayomberos, nganguleros, or paleros are also initiated in Regla de Ocha, as santeros or babalorishas, with the exception of those chosen by Obatala and Oduddua, orishas who do not allow this sort of ecumenism among their children (M 122). Isabel Castellanos lists the Lucumi orishas next to their equivalents in the list of the kimpungulu, to which I have added Castellanos and Castellanos' short list: Olodumare Obatala Chango Babalu-Aye Ochosi Yemaya Ochun Oya Oggun Eleggua Orunmila Nsambi, Sambia Tiembla-tierra Nsasi, Siete Rayos Tata Kanen.Tata Fumbi Nkuyo, Watariamba Baluande Chola Wengue Centella, Mama Wanga, Kariempembe Zarabanda Tata Elegua, Quicio-Puerta, Nkuyu Nfinda Tata Funde, CuatroVientos.Tonda (EQT 74) Despite the appearance of direct correspondences given by this table, the Reglas Congas, refusing merely to imitate the orisha-worship of Regla de Ocha, relegate the mpungus to a subordinate position in their system: "in this process of synthesis," write Castellanos and Castellanos, "there is match ing but not a complete identification. The mpungus are not the object of a special cult, like the Lucumi orishas. One respects them, one names them, they help the faithful, but their role is relatively secondary in the Congo religions where what is fundamental is the cult of the dead" (CA 3:140).

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Re-iirUif tie lilts Cater o \o In the presence of the nganga, that which calls the dead, the mpunguorisha may descend to mount his or her human "horse," nkomo. So mounted, the nkomo may perform extraordinary feats. Among her observations of Mayombe ritual, Cabrera reports instances of possessed individuals who eat fire and handle burning coals, and she tells of one nkomo who, mounted by Nsasi-Chango, grabbed the burning candle lying next to the nganga and put its flame up to his eyes, chest, and sides without burning himself (M 264). Lower than the kiyumbas, simbis, mpungus, and orishas is the Congo ndoki, endoqui, or guindoqui. Bearing the name of bad magic, he is descended from the Angolan nyancka. A malicious spirit, the ndoki goes out at night sometimes flies, sometimes runs at lightning speedto perform grisly bits of mischief on his victims. Sent out by the palero through the nganga's me diation, the ndoki has been known to drink blood and eat human flesh. The Lucumi fear him too (PQ 247). Dramas of Power In her article on the initiation in Regla de Palo, Gonzalez Bueno records ob servations and testimonials made in Santiago de Cuba. Initiation into the religion is called rayamiento en palo, the "marking" central to the regla s rite of passage. The novices, initiates, and mayombero arrive in a room containing a collection of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one scorched sticks. Each partici pant kneels before the nganga, then takes sips of aguardiente from a gourd. Each takes turns spraying the nganga with a mist of this liquor. The neophyte must then sip the liquor, throw down the gourd, take up a lit cigar, put the burning end into his or her mouth, and blow smoke on the nganga. If the initiate is male, a padrino carries out the following ritual acts (a madrina does them for a female initiate): The initiate is stripped of clothes, which will be disposed of after he tramples them, and he is then bathed with leaves and herbs, blindfolded, and led into the sanctuary of the ngangas. There the padrino cuts the ends of his hair and puts them in the nganga cauldron. The padrino sprinkles aguardiente on some branches, and with them he purifies by aspersing the initiate. At this point, the latter may fall into a trance. The marking rite proper can take place after the novice returns from the trance. For the marking, he is wrapped up to the neck in a big scarf and told either to lie down or to remain standing. The padrino proceeds to mark inci sions in the novice's chest with a thorn from the ayua bush. Gonzalez Bueno narrates this part of the marking rite as follows: "Three small vertical inci sions are made on each side of the chest, though some paleros do a fourth

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Hi o diopter Hit oblique incision across the vertical ones; the wounds are dusted with pow dered wood and crushed ^gg shell scorched by fire; sometimes the pow dered bones of the nfumbi (the dead spirit of the nganga) and then wax on top. First the nbele (ceremonial machete) and then the ceremonial cowhorn are placed over the wounds. Afterwards, the tongue is marked in the same way as the chest, and the powder put on the wounds must be swallowed with blood" (Gonzalez Bueno 119). Next comes a ceremonial test before the nganga. The still blindfolded nov ice must identify first a candle held up by the padrino, then a crucifix. Once this step is done, the padrino takes the nbele and strikes each side of the novice's back and the sole of each foot. The padrinos can now greet the ini tiate with the ritual words, "sala maleco," and administer the oaths of the order. Sacrifices of animals, usually black cockerels or chickens, are made now to provide blood to the nganga-spirit. Some of this blood will be mixed with the aguardiente and given to the novice to drink. The sacred mambos are sung. The ceremony is concluded with the washing of the knife over the nganga with brown sugar water. The festivities may continue (Gonzalez Bueno 120). Just as the Lucumi believers may seek a registro or consultation with babalaos or iyalorishas concerning their destiny, the Cuban Congos go to a ngangulero, whose oracular power issues from the prenda. A ngangulero, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, may transmit messages while pos sessed by the mpungu or nganga, thus becoming the medium through which the spirit speaks. Outside of possession states, nganguleros may also perceive the "truth" through special techniques and powers of clairvoyance. Like santeros and santeras, the ngangulero knows how to cast four coconut pieces, which he calls ndungui in Congo rather than by the Lucumi biague or obi, interpreting the configuration of white and dark sides that face up. The Congo practice of casting four sea shells or chamalongos relies on a method of inter pretation similar to that of the ndungui, but in both forms of divination the primary channel of communication and source of power remains the nganga. In addition to reading coconut pieces and shells, the ngangulero uses the method of putting himself into a "mystical trance" during which, with the help of the nganga, his spirit leaves his body, communes with the spirits, and returns to this world with their message. Finally, an oracle called vititi mensu makes use of a horn in whose opening is placed a small mirror; this peep hole into another world is called the mpaka nganga. Holding a lighted candle above the nganga in one hand and the mpaka, with opening facing down, in

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Re-mdrkinf the KRIB Center o Hi the other, the ngangulero allows the smoke to obscure the mirror. Then the same diviner, sometimes singing mambos, reads the signs written by the spirits in the sooted glass (CA 3:173-74). The individualistic and problem-solving magic practiced in Palo Monte, aside from the uses to which the nganga itself can be put, is set in motion by the making of a bilongo. Lachatanere writes that the Bantu bilongomeaning spell, charm, hexcomes from the priests of the Nganga-Bilongo line, from the Mayombe region in what is today Zaire. Also called burundanga and kelembo, the bilongo spell can work beneficent or maleficent magic (CA 3:388). The bilongo has at least three categories of application according to Lachatanere: to secure, or amarrar ("tie up") the love of another by enchant ment; to "curse" another, to spoilsalar, literally "to salt"another's situa tion; and to attract, "atraer," or to distance, "alejar" another (by the "turning way," or apotropaic function). By making this last bilongo, then, one may repulse another's love, as in wishing impotence on the intended victim (MS 69, 70). In order to inflict impotence, one may resort to a bilongo consisting of tranquilizing herbs, soil from a cemetery, and the name of the victim written on a piece of paper (OC 28). The branches of the magic tree called palo mulato (Excothea paniculata) are used by mayomberos to make bilongos that will despoil even a beautiful woman of her appeal or allure, her sandunga. A logic proper to the simile prevails in this bilongo. For its production, one requires the eyes and brains of beautiful animals such as the horse and the peacock. For despojos, or spiri tual cleansings, mayomberos will use the "noble" palo caja, boxwood (Allophyllus cominia), and an infusion of boxwood is effective for stopping hem orrhages or aborting fetuses (M 501, 507). The desire for power and protection ensures the continuation of such practices, serving as they do to give some compensation for the deprivations and hardships of the black underclass. "Magic is the great preoccupation of our blacks," observes Cabrera in an already quoted passage; "and the obtainment, the control of powerful occult forces that obey them blindly has not ceased to be their great desire" (M 16). In his essay "El arte narrativo y la magia" (Narrative art and magic, 1932), which I believe illuminates the principles of verbalization implicit in Bantu magic, Jorge Luis Borges drew out affini ties between narrative causality and magical causality Borges refers to ex amples of a modern fantastic literature that avails itself of the devices of realist verisimilitude to foster belief in the fantastic descriptions or events included in that narrative. In this realist context, Borges asserts, the "lucid, atavistic" order of magic, with its "primitive clarity," seems real and plau-

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in o (inter fitt sible. Magic operates by the law of sympathy explained by Frazer, that is, by imitation or homeopathy on the one hand, or by contact, contagion, on the other, both of them being varieties of analogy In prescientific belief as in fantastic narrative, magic is "the coronation or nightmare of the causal, not its contradiction"; that is, miracles operate as the extension of natural causal ity In narrative as in the prescientific belief to which we all subscribe at some psychological level, magic links disparate events by means of "a precise game of watchfulness, echoes and affinities." All narrative foreshadowings and prefigurations work like omens and belong to this lucid category of the magical, whose logic and simplicity are more appealing than the "infinite and uncontrollable operations" of normal causality (Borges 88-89, 90, 91). Schematizing a certain verbal thaumaturgy, Borges thus uncovers the magical thinking underlying the vraisemblable or verisimilitude of both narrative and the bilongo. The reductionist causality of narrative magic is the magic causal ity of the Congo narrative, whose functors correspond to a concept of hu mans as spiritual-material unities. SpiriU Embodied and Diserabedied The human being created by Nsambi is a complex whole composed of spirit and body, corresponding to internal and external aspects of the person. For the Bakongo, the soul inside, called nsala, animates the body; it is also identi fied with breath and shadow, but the nsala is centered in the heart (unlike the eleda spirit of Lucumi religion, seated in the head) and has the ability to leave and establish itself elsewhere. The belief in the nsala s mobility supports the belief that souls of the departed may be summoned through the work of a nganga-cauldron. Also residing within the body is the mooyo, focused in the stomach or belly, charged with feeding the rest of the body. The body proper is conceived of as a "shell" (concha) or "bundle" (envoltorio) called vuvundi. In death, the vuvundi remains and rots away while the nsala passes on to its next station. The Kongo biometaphysical anatomy has been further elaborated in Cuba under the influences of Catholicism and Spiritualism, as detailed by Castellanos and Castellanos. All human beings, bantus, are again composed of a biological and a spiritual entity. The material shell is the body, ntu-bantu, and the "unintelligent shade," sombra no inteligente or nkwama-bantu. The Creole equivalent for the nsala-soul seems to be the nfuiri, the body-animating spirit, itself composed of three components: the "intelligent shade" called nkwama-ntu; the "intelligence" of the individual called ntu; and personality, with "the gift of speech," the ndinga. In death, again, the ntu-bantu decays and disap-

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R(-iirkiRfltleliiti(t(r o l pears, but the components of the spirit transform into the nfuiri-ntoto or "dead spirit." The Bantu nkwama-ntu, the "intelligent shade," may slip away from the vuvundi, the nsala, and the mooyo. Many Cubans combine the belief in the sombra inteligente with the Spiritualist doctrine, propounded by Allan Kardek, of the pcricsprit, named after the analogous perisperm surrounding the seed germ; that is, the Kardekian periesprit usually protects the body but sometimes departs from it. In Congo philosophy, the nkwama-ntu surrounds the body during the waking hours, holding together its constituent parts; when one dreams, this spirit force goes forth to travel and experience but remains attached to the body by a cordon dc plata, a "silver cord." Hence the name of the popular espiritismo dc cordon. Even after death, the nkawama-ntu (intelligent shade) allows the nfuiri-ntoto (dead spirit) to retain his or her integrity and personality, bound up in the ndinga, the personality identified with the gift of language (CA 3: 131-33). The Kongo bisimbi are the dead, or, more exactly, their spirits, nkwama-ntu, which speak in possession and divination through the agency of the nganga (FS 127). In an illuminating comparative study of funeral rites among the Bakoko-Bantu and the Afro-Dominicans, the Zairean anthropologist MuambaTujibikilo finds that similarities between the rites reveal a common view toward death and the deceased. For both the African and the Domini can groups, the soul indeed departs from the body at death, absenting itself from family and familiars. Death does not however signify a complete break in the relationship between the living and the dead, insofar as the dead are thought to maintain communication with the living. They are therefore not so much one's deceased as one's ancestors who continue living in a certain sense, for the living continue to speak with their dead and will invite them back into the "circle of the living," offering their ancestors food and other gifts, calling on them for guidance and support. Such postmortem survival entails an extended concept of the family (Tujibikilo 47). Not only do living and dead eat and speak with one another; the injus tices that the departed have suffered must be borne and redressed by the living as well. Tujibikilo writes, "Living and dead are strongly united in a dialectic of fortification, because the ancestor nourishes himself with the gifts of the living, while the living find in the ancestor a protector, the assur ance and the guarantee of the continuity of the lineage. They come to him to obtain blessing, fecundity, the fertility of the earth and the abundance of the harvest." This death-transcending coexistence, assuming a continuity on which the Afro-Dominican "ancestral logic" is founded, means that there is

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114 o (lupin Fm more to the self than one's self; namely, other selves. Those who believe in this continuity recognize that death is a threshold, not a limit, across which the living and the dead can nurture the ties of sociability and solidarity Those other selves inTujibikilo's "dialectic of fortification" shore up the self's own will to resist and challenge oppressive social structures. "Ancestral logic" is therefore a "dialectic of the struggle for the dignity and the rights of the Caribbean man or woman" (Tujibikilo 48, 54, 53). The Colombian novelist Manuel Zapata Olivella derives a related African concept of language from Bantu ontogeny, that of the kulonda. Kulonda is defined as the engendering of offspring in the womb by the act of an ances tor. As with the ancestor who guides and protects the offspring, the word as kulonda marks another connection to the past through lineage and consan guinity: "In this legacy of powers is inscribed the word as giver of life and intelligence" ("Ancestros" 51; seeTempels 159). As an alternative to Euro pean phonocentrism, which sees the "letter" as a parasitic presence within the body of the organism that speaks (see D 128), the Bantu doctrine of kulonda as "inscription" supposes a language that flows within the body and through the bodies of all the generations. The ancestral as the force of kulonda figures prominently in Zapata Olivella's novels, especially in Chango, el gran putas, set in part in the Caribbean. In an early scene of the novel, the historically based character of Father Claver attempts to instill the fear of eternal damnation into a recalcitrant slave. The slave, a babalao, responds: "You are mistaken, my indefatigable persecutor, the only eternity is in the Muntu." Muntu means "hombre," "man," its plural is Bantu, and Zapata Olivella's glossarycalled "Cuaderno de bitacora" or shipboard "logbook"explains that "Bantu" designates not only the human being but all the living and the dead and all that sustain that life so con ceived. Accordingly, the word Bantu "alludes to the force that unites humans in a single knot with their forebears and posterity immersed in the universe, present, past and future" (Zapata Olivella, Chango 271, 731; seeTempels 55). By extended analogy, the novel Chango unfolds an expanded notion of charac ter as linked by communication with deceased characters who continue life as sombras, or nkwama-ntu.The African Americans of today join hands with the African Americans of years past. The history of slavery takes on a signifi cance beyond that of suffering and victimage in this omnitemporal frame work. Zapata Olivella's multigenerational saga thus proposes a restorative, militant fiction of a collective racial subject engaged in an ongoing dialogue with spirits of the past. This sort of elaboration on the idea of kulonda does not to my knowledge appear in Afro-Cuban narratives.

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Ke-iirkiif tie luti Center o IB Kutuguangos and Otber Narratives The traditional, sacred narratives of the Cuban Congos are called kutuguangos. The kutuguangos resemble the pataki of Lucumi tradition, although they are not as numerous, in forming a complete "canon" of folkloric stories that explain the origins of natural phenomena, the behavior of the spirits, the human condition, the existence of evil, and the inevitability of death. Castellanos and Castellanos retell ten of the kutuguangos they have gleaned from interviews with informants and from other authors. Some of the sto ries account for the tragic separation of humans from Nsambi, the Congo God. In one of these stories, Nsambi in heaven, or muna-nsulu, created the earth, or muna-ntoto, and had the custom of climbing up or down between the worlds by way of the sacred ceiba tree, nkunia-ungundu, called Iroko by the Lucumis. Next, Nsambi created humansthe Bantu. To these he said that the nkuniaungundu is sacred and should never be chopped down. Then Nsambi taught the Bantu to dance and sing so that they might beguile their boredom. Here is where the trouble starts: to dance and sing, the Bantu needed drums, and once they had carved out some drums they had to have a bigger drum, and what better source of a trunk for a bigger drum than the nkunia-ungundu? Foolishly, the Bantu cut down the sacred tree and made their giant instru ment. Not pleased, Nsambi sent down the buzzard, the aura tifiosa, to re trieve the drum, on which Nsambi henceforth blasted out the thunder from the heavens. By committing their sacrilege, humans have lost their immunity from strife, disease, suffering, and death (CA 3:175-76). Humans lose this divine privilege again in the second kutuguango of Castellanos and Castellanos' collection. Nsambi had the custom of descend ing to the earth to collect his favorite food, yams, names, at the side of a river, and then return to heaven. There he pronounced, "In heaven there is plenty of food. You can eat whatever you like of it, except for these yams, which I reserve for myself." Nsambi, drowsy after eating so many yams, fell asleep. The animals then saw their chance to eat up the tasty yams: the ox, the cow, the dogs, the goats; each animal had one. When only one yam was left, el hombre (the man) went up to the pot to take it but hesitated; his wife, la mujer (the woman), unfortunately urged him on. Nsambi woke up hungry, dis covered that all his yams had been eaten up, then called all the creatures to announce: "You have disobeyed your God. Now leave heaven, to live on the earth with pain, work, sickness, death! I separate myself from you. I'm go ing far, far away. . Goodbye!"

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IK o (hipterHft Two other kutuguangos recorded by Castellanos and Castellanos relate other versions of the original sin. In the first of these narratives, the expul sion is motivated by a misunderstanding. Nsambi had given a calabash as food to a woman, but another woman had exchanged it for a rotten one. Believing that Nsambi had given them an unsatisfactory gift, all the women rebelled against the Almighty and received their punishment. The other kutugungo explains why heaven is so far away from earth: an ill-tempered woman, tickled by mischievous clouds one day while she is sweeping, chases them away. She scares the clouds so much that they fly to the sky, taking heaven away with them (CA 3:176-77). All four of these summarized narra tives acknowledge, in cosmogonic myth, the condition of destitution, the sense of a lost birthright and plenitude never to be recovered but somewhat compensated for in dealings with the mediating mpungus. One also notes the spirit of misogyny in those kutuguangos, which assign to "woman," resembling Eve in Judeo-Christian tradition, the greater part of the blame for mankind's primordial loss. Castellanos and Castellanos present other kutuguangos that blame woman again, this time for the curse of mortality. One day la Muerte, Death, "an old woman dressed in black," escaped from Nsambi and sought refuge on earth. Nsambi comes hunting with two dogs; Death runs to a house and knocks on the door, asking for a hiding place. A woman answers, and Death gains entry into her house after giving her a golden chain. Soon thereafter, Nsambi comes and knocks on the door.The woman answers. No Death here, she says. Nsambi returns to heaven without his quarry, and we are left to conclude that woman's venality and duplicity are responsible for Death's dominion over life (CA 3:179). Of greater elaboration and complexity are the stories of Cabrera's Por que ... Cuento negros de Cuba (Why . black stories from Cuba, 1948) that feature Kongo-based elements of myth and ritual. In her morphological study of Cabrera's stories, many of which do draw from kutuguangos, Mariela Gutierrez employs the Proppian model of narrative analysis that was adapted by Claude Bremond. Gutierrez also bases her analysis on the premise of a Bantu cosmovision that perceives a reality that constantly regenerates itself, striving continually to reestablish a universal harmony that some see incar nated in the image of the bosquc, the forest or jungle imaged as the Earthly Paradise. All parts of this unity are irreplaceable and integral, establishing a balance among themselves. They are joined by the spiritual-cosmic force called ntu in Kikongo: the previously discussed divine intelligence, "the origi-

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Re-M6rkina the Iflnti Center o ill nal point of Creation" popularized by the Belgian writer Placide Tempels. In this expanded conception, ntu forms the basis of a kind of Kongo monism, the "unique and pristine formula from which all creation proceeded," "matter and spirit, unified in one point where they cannot separate." All creation, penetrated and united by ntu, continually undergoes the transition through creation-death-resurrection, the self-renewing pattern that corresponds to the narrative design of equilib rium-disequilibrium-equilibrium that Gutierrez discerns in Cabrera's AfroCuban stories. Underlying all disorder, this vision maintains, is a discernible if complex order. All antagonism is a divine harmony working itself out. In Gutierrez's reading of Cabrera s trickster stories, the cyclical pattern of life and death is translated into the narrative acts of an antagonist who dispos sesses a protagonist (or attempts to do so) through cunning, only to be out witted in his or her turn by the protagonist, who reestablishes his claim on the recovered possession (Gutierrez 10, 11; see Tempels 49-53). Although not a trickster story, Cabrera's "Tatabisako," one of the Cuentos negros, features rituals with Kongo elements set into the cycle of equilibriumdisequilibrium-equilibrium. In the story, apparently set in an African context by its cultural references, a woman identified only as "la mujer" works daily in a plot of land beside a lake. Seeing that she must carry her crying baby son on her back as she labors, the god Tatabisako, the "Master of the Lagoon Water," takes pity on the boy, rises from the water and offers to care for him while the woman performs her daily task. The arrangement works out well, relieving the woman of her extra burden, until one day when she decides to thank the Water Lord with an offering of a goat. Unable to find the right words, she offends the Water God by ineptly saying, "<>," which means, roughly, "Eat goat all with son."The consequences of the woman's breach of decorum are catastrophic. Tatabisako, angrily mis understanding the woman's intent, withdraws into the water with the boy; the bulrushes of the shore turn into venomous black snakes; rocks become enormous crocodiles; the evil spirits called guijes cast sharp pebbles in her direction. "The black lagoon boiled, red with blood." So great is the inarticu late woman's grief that at home, in the presence of her husband, she can only scream and roll in the dirt. Confused and as yet unaware of the tragic loss, the husband opens a casserole in which the woman has cooked a calf's head; he rushes to the conclusion that it is his child's head that she has served for dinner. Grief and horror spread through the village; the chief may have to punish the husband with death for the alleged infanticide (CN 17-18, 119, 120).

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lit o (lipttrfifc Fortunately, however, the baba or babalao of the village can perform a divi nation rite to ascertain whether the boy has been killed. The babalao pos sessesand here enters the Congo elementa prenda or nganga, which he calls Aire Grande ("Big Air"), and a deer's horn he calls Aire Chico ("Little Air"). "Aire Grande would bring him all the words that were said; Aire Chico would tell him all he had seen." Aire Chico also tells him that Tatabisako threatens to flood the land and destroy the crops. In the propitiatory rite he orders done, the baba first floats a calabash into the center of the lake, then twelve he-goats, and then twelve she-goats. Tatabisako accepts the offerings and reappears with the child asleep on his shoulder, "cradled in the great night." Tatabisako offers the child to his mortified mother, but she is too ashamed to receive him; the father, instead, takes the child. The story con cludes by telling us that the humiliated woman hides herself and runs away, never to return (CN 120, 122, 123).The story is a paradigm of tribal moral ity, a sort of a social charter relegating human sacrifice and cannibalism to the "animal" realm of the socially other to which the improperly behaving and speaking woman has been exiled. In order for the community to restore the equilibrium she has upset, the woman must be separated, reviled, and cast out. As in other traditions, some anthropogonic stories explain the Congo ra tionale for ritual. In Cabrera's Por que ..., Yacara, the first man, worked and scratched and turned over the soil of the earth, Entoto.The man cries out, "I am the King, the King of the World!" Wanting to know the identity of her torturer, Entoto asks Cheche-Kalunga, the hill, who it might be. Entoto then confronts Yacara, but Yacara justifies himself: "Nsambi sent me!" Yacara's presumptuous argument holds no weight for the earth, who closes herself up. Yacara must then appeal to Nsambi. The Almighty, not wanting to get too involved, tells Yacara to work out the problem between himself and Entoto (the earth). Entoto and Yacara meet and confer; the man agrees to the earth's condition: "You will sustain me with your children day by day and I, finally, will pay you with my body, which you will devour when Nsambi, our father, authorizes you, and may it be He who delivers me to you when he sees fit." The pact made, the story concludes with an epilogue telling that Man came to an understanding with Fire, the Spirits, the beasts, the Mountain, and the River but not with the Sea or the Wind (PQ 6 3-6 5). The story thus recalls the origins of cultivation and culture, reconciling their opposition to the natural world. Nsambi adjudicates in heaven, but humans must renew their contract with the earth, depicted here as the sentient and intelligent planet as well as the source of life and sustenance.

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Re-Mrkiif tkc Iati Center o \n Another kutuguango rewritten by Cabrera, titled "Time Battles the Sun, and the Moon Consoles the Earth," tells of the day on which Time, King Embu, goes out in search of a woman who can bear him children, since his wife at home, the Ceiba, cannot. This departure will soon lead to another disruption and conflict. InTangu-Tangu, King Embu (Time) finds a fecund Moana-Entoto ("Young Earth") who, despite having borne many star-chil dren already, cries because her children's father, the Sun or KingTangu, will burn them all. Besides that, the cruel Sun spends his time up on the plain with his concubine named Ensuro, the Moon. Embii engages in battle with Tangu and defeats him, sending the sun down into a dark abyss. A new order is established: as victor in that inaugural confrontation, Time may now lay down with fertile Earth; the Sun must disappear at night, when the Moon pours her beneficent light on the mother of the stars, and yet the Sun will rise again to renew "the eternal struggle" with Time (PQ 66-67). A devil called Indiambo appears in Cabrera's story "Cundio brujeria mala," whose title promises to explain how "Bad magic spread" and whose narra tive once again illustrates the importance of magic in the Congo universe. The woodcutter Brakunde passes daily in front of the devil Indiambo s hut on his way to work. When he does so, the devil regularly calls out to Brakunde, "Who rules?," to which the godly woodcutter regularly replies, "jlnzambi!" (Nsambi). It turns out that Indiambo covets Brakunde's wife, Diansola, and plots to take her away from her husband. He prepares the bad magic in the form of a uemba, or ebboa spelland then ties up an amarre charm by putting three knots in a scorched strip of corn husk. The first uemba charm succeeds in sending Brakunde to jail, but Diansola remains inaccessible; she is protected by Inzambi and by the dog Bagarabundi, and everyone knows that devils do not get along well with dogs. The day arrives when Brakunde is to be released, but since Indiambo has not yet secured the love of Diansola, he abducts her as she is walking to the jail to meet Brakunde. Now wifeless, Brakunde returns home alone, but his hatchet follows the devil and his captive, cutting through to Indiambo's hid ing place. Bagarabundi then leads his master there, and Brakunde hacks the devil into many little pieces. So that the pieces of Indiambo will not reunite, Brakunde and Diansola scatter them around the world, "each piece in a different country." By the same act, however, they unwittingly spread the evil in those pieces throughout the world (PQ 30-34). Virtue and piety are good, but sometimes magic is stronger. The uemba (or wanga) consists of a powder called empolo, which is sprinkled near a door so that the intended victim may step on it, thus absorbing its potency into

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IN o Chapter Fife his or her body (PQ 253). Magic disrupts the equilibrium of conjugal order, but it takes a magic hatchet, a faithful dog, love, and belief to destroy evil and restore that equilibrium. BaKongo Memories Dora Alonso, folklorist, has two collections that include Afro-Cuban stories. Ponolani (1966) gathers together fragmentary narratives of devils and enchantments. With Ponolani and the subsequent collection Cuentos (1976), one story from which I will discuss in chapter 7, Alonso reveals an interest in preserv ing the Bantu heritage and especially the religious core of its values. The fragments of Ponolani include sketches, vignettes, evocative descrip tions and some short, very slim stories. Their style is minimalist in the extreme. As the narrator indicates, these bits and pieces came from the Bakongo with Ponolani, a "negrita macua" from the village of Sama Guengeni. Ponolani is the grandmother of Emilia, the black woman who nursed and raised Alonso's child. The grandmother's thin narratives evoke the distanced mythical epoch remembered by slaves and their descendants, in whose story telling the voice cannot recuperate the seeming fullness of that closed, or ganic world. Ponolani, chained and carried away from her native land by the slave traders, survived the Middle Passage across "[e]l mar azul de Yemaya." Yet the blue sea of Yemaya, apparently indifferent to Ponolani's fate, barely sustains the reminder of the storyteller's continuing presence after her death: "All that remained floating adrift on the wave and the breeze and in the phosphorescent fish, were the stories of her village of Sama Guengeni" (Alonso, Ponolani 11, 19, 22). Like Cabrera's stories, Ponolani's are populated by the characters of myth and legend, including devils, diablos. As such, they offer another glimpse into aspects of the Bantu folklore that religious practice in itself does not convey. In one narrative fragment from the collection, Emilia's son Lilo is described as having one turned-in eye and knowing how to "dance on one foot like the Devil Donkine." In a longer narrative, the orphan girl of "La huerfana" (The orphan), leaves her adoptive father's house and claims her birthright from Palice the devil, whom she calls "padre." Instead of eating his own daughter, Palice gives her a palace and her own pig. Later on, he allows her to see her siblings on the condition that she not allow them to embrace her. After Palice dies, she inherits everything. Another of Alonso's devils appears in the two-page story titled "Lorenzo." The protagonist of the same name, seeking his fortune, arrives at the house of a devil who allows the boy to enter but only so he can eat him. Lorenzo

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Re-narkiai the Bta Ceiter o III isn't fooled by his hungry host. On the pretense of going to sleep outside, Lorenzo goes to the devil's shed, finds a drum and begins to play it. The enchanted "jbabiquindumba!" of Lorenzo's drumming arouses the devil, who cannot help but dance, such is his nature. The clever drummer will then put the devil to work to his own advantage (Alonso, Ponolani 36-58). Other stories in Ponolani communicate an intent to distinguish the human world from the animaland the possible difficulty of doing so in an ani mated or humanized universe. Pedro Animal is "half human and the rest of his body something strange." Yet Pedro Animal laughs at Perro, "Dog," for trying to disguise himself as a human. In "La mona," the female monkey of the title tricks a man into marrying her. Their little son betrays his mother's secret, but the truth will out when the man plays his bandurria (similar to a fiddle), and the maternal simian cannot help but sing and dance and turn into her true monkey self. No one doubts what should be done next: "Right there they cut off her head" (Alonso, Ponolani 64, 68). In the story "Panga Maleka, cazador," the hunter Panga marries a woman who has eaten up every one of her previous suitors. She will not eat up her husband just yet, however: she sends him to the grove to gather mangos, knowing that devils await him there. But Panga sings a song that brings his dogs to the rescue. Self-confident, master of his dogs, and musically gifted, Panga vanquishes the devils. End of story (Alonso, Ponolani 86). "Lilo," more a vignette than a story, tells of Emilia's son Lilo, the same one who could dance on one foot like the Devil Donkine at the reunions and bonfires. Lilo sings, and from his mouth, the narrator tells us, "would come out devils and spells and evocation of faraway Africa of his ancient blood, dead on the island by the hand of the slave trade; but resuscitated in a thou sand secret and beautiful lives; in long, long, long flights of music and fire beetles" (Alonso, Ponolani 90). Donkine is a one-legged devil who, when his drums play themselves, can do nothing but dance on his single foot. This occurs in the story "Donkine bailador" (Donkine, Dancer). The mischievous twins, the Jimaguas known to Lucumi tradition, want to put a stop to this dancing and call Donkine by blowing on a calabash whistle. His happy dance interrupted, the angry devil grabs the impertinent twins by the ears but finds no whistle, for the little pkaios (rogues) have hidden it under their animal skins (Alonso, Ponolani 89, 90, 124). The story "El hijo del diablo" (The son of the devil) tells of an herbalist's widow who boils and eats up a large egg she finds in a bush of Guinea grass. Already pregnant, she becomes doubly impregnated because the egg belongs

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It! o (lipttrfin to the devil's wife, Ja Diabla. At the end of nine months, the widow gives birth as expected to a set of twins: one of them normal, the other with "long, long fingernails, teeth like pins, eyes like a boa." While she nurses them, the diablito bites and scratches her nipple. The mother continues to nurse and love both her sons, despite the bad twin's mischief. One day, the two boys go out to cut firewood; the good son climbs up a tree, and the bad son, instead of handing the hatchet to his half brother, enlists the aid of all the devils to chop down the tree. The good son calls his dogs, who come to the rescue, but prevents them from killing his brother: "After all," he explains, "the two of us were together in the heart of my mother!" (Alonso, Ponolani 94, 96) With time and transculturation, as the previous "devil stories" and the preceding good twin/bad twin story illustrate, the devils of the Congo nar ratives appear as humanized versions of Lucifer-Satan. In "Juanillo jugador," Juanillo "the gambler" loses big in one game, falling so deeply into debt that he must become the slave of the devil don Jose, who secretly plans to eat up the improvident young man after subjecting him to a series of trials. It turns out that the devil's wife is a Christian (sic), and so is their good daughter Juanita, who falls in love with Juanillo and secretly performs the tasks that her father has assigned him. Juanita and Juanillo can then be married by a priest. Religious doctrines continue to intercross as Juanita gives Juanillo the means for them to escape her father, who quickly approaches on horseback. She says to her husband, "Throw this grain of salt. Papa doesn't step on Yemaya's sea." The devil cannot pass the grain of salt and must turn back (Alonso, Ponolani 115). Images of centering once again dominate in the last story of Ponolani, "Cuento de marido bonito" (Story of the handsome husband), which is re markable for its intricate construction and suggestive imagery. In the story, a young man goes searching for his sister, who has married a devil, the "hand some husband" of the title, and from whom he seeks to release her. At the outset of his journey he kills an ox and shares the meat, successively, with a lion, an eagle, and an ant. Each grateful animal gives the generous youth the ability to take on his form when the youth utters the words, "God is a lion!" "God is an eagle!," and so on.The gifts serve him well in helping him find the devil's palace and then find the means to kill the devil. Once the brother has arrived, it is the sister who draws the essential information out of the devil as he talks in his sleep: "My life is so hard and never ends. And there is only one way to take it from me: in the river there is a very bad animal called porcupine. That animal eats sheep. It is necessary to fight with him, beat him and pull out a little box from his craw. Inside that box there is a dove, inside

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Ke-ifrkJiftk(lnti Center o II) the dove an egg. In that egg is the center of my life; if you break it on my forehead, my time will come." With this information, the resourceful brother, by transforming himself into an eagle, lion, and ant at the appropriate times, can locate the egg (in the dove in the box in the stomach of the porcupine), and the sister will smash the egg on the devil's head, thus ending his life (Alonso, Ponolani 130). The story conforms to the familiar pattern of equilibrium-disequilibriumequilibrium. The hero seeks the object, his sister, and thus seeks to reestab lish the familial unit. The means or agency for attaining that object, the egg, is endowed with a nganga-like power inasmuch as it holds the life or nkwama-ntu of the devil. The opponent is the sister's husband, a devil akin to the demons of the kutuguangos. The word as nommo not only names the real things of the story but, in naming them, creates them: the brother says he is an animal, and he is that animal. Less apparently, when the devil de scribes the whereabouts of the egg containing his life, the story confirms its own self-referring reality. With the devil out of the way, moral order is restored, good triumphs. The story's narrative patterns of communication, centering, desire, and assistance all contribute to affirming the values of gen erosity, cunning, fraternal love, persistence, and magic methods. Not coincidentally, the devil's unconscious speech recalls the words of the palero who parrots the word of anotherthat is, the word of an absent authority or dead father.

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6 VersiMU f VoniM Yet for himself Wcs was moved by the certainty that his Fa had not yet been acted out, and he sought to discover what it would be. This poised moment in the point of the horn, perhaps it was merely a place where Mawu had paused to rest in the writing of the story, which remained unfinished. Harold Courlander, The African A passage in Carpentier s jEcue-Yamba-O! reveals an early stereotypical view of the Vaudou practiced by the Haitians in Cuba. In that novel, the character Usebio Cue, returning home through an old sugar mill after a cyclone, peeks into an abandoned barracon or slaves' quarters and catches a glimpse of Hai tian workers performing secret ceremonies, in the company of a feared bruja named Paula Macho, known for casting spells and the evil eye. The sight of their altaradorned with a skull, "a rosary of molars," a femur, and other bonesand the thought of Haitians in the cemetery, stealing the dead, give a panicked Usebio reason enough to turn heels and run (EYO 62).The scene suggests the manner in which Haitians and their "magic" represented a threatening otherness within the Cuban society of the Republican period. Vaudou belief and practice have been surrounded by negative stereotypes outside of Cuba as well. Novels, movies, television, and comic books have popularized a kitschy-exotic image of Vaudou, evoking a slave island of "witch doctors," spells, possessions, zombies, and frenzied dances to the beat of the tom-tom. As for more ethnologically responsible studies and interpretations of the religion, Vaudou themes and motifs have appeared in the Caribbean-based narratives of Jacques Stephen Alexis, Alejo Carpentier, Antonio Benitez Rojo, Pierre Clitandre, Maya Deren, Zora Neale Hurston, Wilson Harris, Alfred Metraux, Jacques Roumain, Patrick Taylor, Robert Farris Thompson, Manuel Zapata Olivella, and Wade Davis, even if a rather lurid movie was based on this last author's study of zombification. These authors make for fascinating

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hninsilfulM o IK reading on an intriguing and as yet little understood topic within the field of Afro-Caribbean narrative. The Cuban religion known as the "Regla Arara" traces its African origins back to Dahomeyan or Ewe-Fon,Yoruba, and Kongo cultures by way of Haitian Vaudou. (I use the common "French" spelling since it evokes Creole pro nunciation and defamiliarizes what has been stereotyped under other spellings in English and Spanish writing.) The name Aiara itself is a cognate of the Haitian-Dahomeyan Rada, which derives from the name Allada, a town in Dahomey (FS 274-75n. 5). Cabrera observes that Arara "enjoys great pres tige" in Cuba, and its bokonos (bokors) or priests have charged higher "fees" or derechos than their Lucumi counterparts for comparable services (M 22 n). Cuban practitioners of Arara, usually reluctant to reveal the secrets of their cult, are more numerous in the cities of Matanzas and Santiago de Cuba than in Havana for historical reasons that I will examine shortly. A syncretic Creole religion of the Antilleslike Obeah, Myalism, Pocomania, Gaga, Shango, Candomble, Umbanda, Regla de Ocha, Regla Abakua, Palo Monte, and other layers of the Caribbean religious palimpsestVaudou emerged from a fusion of beliefs and practices related to the worship of West African gods. Like the other neo-African religions of the region, Vaudou kept alive such practices as possession, sacrifice, initiation, sacred music, religious dance, ethnomedicine, and the investing of objects with supernatural powers. Since Vaudou combines elements from Catholic, Dahomeyan, Yoruba, Kongo, and other religions, Thompson calls it an example of "Africa reblended" (164). As with the Afro-Cuban religions discussed in previous chapters, the ritual, mythology, and doctrine of Vaudou comprise a sign system that has maintained an identity distinct from the Regla Lucumi, the Regla Abakua, and the Regla Conga. Although the similarities between those religions and Vaudou are note worthy, the distinguishing characteristics of the Afro-Haitian recombination include the following: the belligerent and sometimes militant nature of loaworship, whose inherent aggressivity arguably motivated anti-French resis tance in the Haitian Revolution; the close though variable and ambiguous relationship that Vaudou has had with national politics after independence; and the expressive primacy in Vaudou of singing, dance, and ritual over storytelling. Yet despite Vaudou's underestimation of narrative in its own sig nifying system, Vaudou's signs have been recoded in literary narrative. Its ritual, doctrinal, and artistic narratizations in texts that incorporate Vaudou signs can be understood within an adequate interpretive framework informed by history and semiotics.

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\U o (kiptcrSii Afro-Cuban culture's strong connection with Haiti begins at the end of the eighteenth century when the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution on Saint Domingue forced numerous planters and their slaves to relocate in south eastern Cuba and especially in the city of Santiago. Fernando Ortiz inciden tally remarks in his foreword to j;Oh,mioYemayd!! that the name of its author, Romulo Lachatanere, probably derives from the Franco-Haitian Lachataignerais and links his family's establishment on the island with the event of the French colonial exodus ("Predisposition" xii-xiii). As Carpentier's la musica en Cuba recounts it, many plantation owners fleeing from the Haitian Revolution dis embarked in Santiago de Cuba with their domestic slaves. Those who had the means to do so traveled on to New Orleans. Others remained, some of whom, grateful to have escaped the bloodbath, sang both the "Marseillaise" and the "Hymne a Saint Louis" (128). In his study on Sarduy, Gonzalez Echevarria refers to the Haitian-Cuban migration in affirming a continuity between the histories of the two islands. This continuity is evidenced today in the Afro-Cuban dances called danzon, cha-cha-chd, and salsa: these originated in the contredanse that was brought over by the French planters from Haiti (and made famous by Bizet's Carmen) and which had previously originated in the English country dance (RSS 7 6). The same history of ruptures and transplantations includes the narrative of howVaudou became vodii or vodun on the Spanish isle. Dathorne character izes a process of disintegration and reintegration by which African-based religions, "recollected in a dismembered form" on one island, such as Haiti, are transported and "evolved into a secondary synthetic form," such as the Regla Arara of Oriente Province (28). In that transfer of discourse and practices, the process of transculturation continued, as heteroclite mythologies and liturgies merged and mixed, producing a new religious synthesis. In contrasting Haitian with Cuban and Brazilian religious syntheses, Bastide argues that those produced by the latter two were also subject to a process of "cultural fossilisation," by which faith served as a defense of self-identity and dignity against continuous onslaughts from the social environ ment. A "preserved" or "fossilised" religion exhibits another culture's more conservative tendency to "cristalis[e]" and "remov[e] it from the flux of history." On the other hand, a continually evolving and self-adapting reli gion such as Bastide finds in HaitianVaudou merits qualification as a "living" religion (131). The perception of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian religions as "fossilised" cultural spheres separated from history overlooks, in my view, their evolving, adaptive character in daily life, and possibly their intrinsic historicity. I believe that Bastide is nonetheless correct in accentuating the

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Version if iidoi o IN closer connection between Vaudou and historical processes, a connection that distinguishes it from most Afro-Cuban religions. Given its characteristic historicity, Vaudou nonetheless lacks a historical consciousness that would make it an authentic agent for progressive social change. Taylor has found in Vaudou an "example of the mythical encoding of experience," but he ob serves, from a more rationalist perspective than that of Vaudou s apologists, that Vaudou does not escape its mythical closure nor achieve the degree of self-conscious understanding that would allow it to engage in effective social critique (98). Among its sympathetic interpretations, Maya Deren s account of Vaudou in The Divine Horsemen sees it as both a belief system and a survival mechanism appropriate to the impoverished milieu in which it is practiced. For the ur banized peasants, its cognitive schemes serve the function of providing "a familiar and stabilizing pattern, a comforting echo of the known past in an otherwise confusing and frightening new world" (87n.). In her affirmative definition of the religion in Tell My Horse, Zora Neale Hurston offers a sugges tive reading of Vaudou as a "religion of creation and life"; furthermore, "[i]t is the worship of the sun, the water and other natural forces, but the symbol ism is no better understood than that of other religions and consequently is taken too literally" (137). To be better understood, Hurston seems to be suggesting, Vaudou is to be interpreted in a nonliteral fashion, through a certain poetics or metaphorics. In this chapter, which will examine Vaudou from both the "critical" and the "sympathetic" perspectives, an exposition of the history, institution, ritual, and myth of the Vaudou religious system will precede a reading of Carpentier s El reino de este mundo (The kingdom of this world) and Benitez Rojo s story "La tierra y el cielo" (Earth and heaven), both of them Cuban narratives that focus on mythical and historical aspects of Vaudou. The Vaudou subtext to those narratives is multifaceted and as complex as the religion itself, but a brief reconstruction of Vaudou s history and system will help to define the Afro-Caribbean dimensions of Carpentier s novel and Benitez Rojo's short story. We will begin with some comparisons between Afro-Haitian and Afro-Cuban religions. As contributors to "slave ideology," Vaudou and Santeria, writes Lewis, "became . active protagonists in the war against the system" in Saint Domingue and Cuba. They became active protagonists in two ways. First, slave religion provided a medium of "religious compromise" whereby dis tinct African traditions could combine and mesh to produce the basis of an ideological unity among the rebelling slaves. Second, both syncretic religions initiated an "assimilationist compromise" with the official Catholicism and

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tit o (kipttrfii thus blunted or avoided potential opposition from the clergy. Yet of the two Vaudou was always more of a "unifying force . that nurtured the revolu tionary drive" (Lewis 193).Vaudou is especially significant to Caribbean his tory and narrative because its believers, as Laguerre asserts, "became the first organised foci of open resistance to slavery" (33). Afro-Cuban religions, on the other hand, could make only an ambiguous and minor contribution to Cuban history. This weakness may account for the turn to Vaudou tradition within some Afro-Cuban narratives concerned with the possibilities of his torical change in the Caribbean. There were certainly significant similarities in the experience of slaves on the two sugar-producing islands. The runaway slaves were cimarrones in Cuba and matiabo in Haiti (FS 125). In both Cuba and Haiti, Laguerre notes, Satur day evening gatherings for dance and worship were also the occasion for organizing slave revolt (14). Lewis however attributes the weaker contribu tion of slave religion in Cuba to "the very ethnic heterogeneity" of the Cu ban population in the nineteenth century. At that time, distinct racial and social groups vied for ascendancy. In addition to this lack of unity, the slaves' desire for emancipation clashed with the racist sentiment of the anti-Spanish revolutionary party, which feared the creation of "another Haiti" and for that reason moved but slowly toward abolition. Distancing themselves from the black slaves, the class of mulattoes, some of whom owning land and even their own slaves, felt that "the national interest" held priority over abolition, and it was from this group that the revolutionary leaders Maceo and Gomez emerged. These domestic factors deflecting the force of slave religion in Cuba kept it from having the impact that Vaudou had in Haiti, although that did not prevent some Cubans from becoming serviteurs and organizing their own Vaudou-inspired insurrections in the southeast end of the island (Lewis 194). Laguerre records, incidentally, that the Vaudou priest Padrejean, one of the leaders of the anticolonial revolt in Saint Domingue, was a maroon who may have arrived in Port-de-Paix by way of Santo Domingo or Cuba (29). Seriitton tithe Cub Some 85 percent of the Haitian population is said to practice Vaudou today. Like the Cuban Regla de Ocha, the Sociedad Secreta Abakua, and Palo Monte, Vaudou teaches that believers can call upon the deities to intervene in their affairs and problems. As a worldview that mediates the relation between the human and the divine, Vaudou suffuses everyday life with its significations. Within its sign-world, order is found in chaos, and everything is related to everything else and has a reason for being so. "WithinVaudou society," writes

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Vcrsioiis f Viiiii o ||) Davis, "there are no accidents. It is a closed system of belief in which no event has a life of its own" (77). In Deren's previously summarized view, Vaudou serves the practical func tion of developing familiar patterns, controlling an environment, and creat ing meaning. A practical order of abstraction is implicit in Vaudou worship: the believer gives devotion to Jes Invisibles acting behind phenomena, contrary to the simplistic fetishism or animism wrongly attributed to the cult. "To worship the loa,'1 Deren emphasizes, "is to celebrate the principle, not the matter in which it may be momentarily or permanently manifest" (89). This principle informs matter as an indwelling spirit but corresponds to an incorporeal will and essence. Haitian peasants who practice the religion say they "serve," as serviteurs, the vaudoux or loas. These latter designations mean "gods" or "spirits" and come from the Fon language spoken in Benin (formerly Dahomey and Togo). Since "one either 'serves the loa' ... or one does not," the word Vaudou does not exactly name the religion but rather the ritual events specific to this ser vice (Davis ii).The serviteur does not for all that renounce Catholic beliefs or practices but rather accommodates them into a system dominated by West African-based signs. Vaudou devotees do continue to uphold the sacraments, for baptism, communion, and extreme unction "have magical properties" for the serviteur, and for this reason "Vaudou" works as a name for the religious system, its customs of service and social organization included (Metraux 59). One leader in Vaudou society is the hounoan, the high priest of the cult. The houngan works as theologian, interpreter, diviner, storyteller, musician, and herbalist-healer. His religious training has given him connaissance, the special knowledge of the cures and rituals by which he commands the supernatural. Female figures within the hierarchy are the hounsis, female temple initiates robed in white, and the mambos, priestesses of the cult. Otherpersonnel in clude the commandant la place, or master of ceremonies; and the houguenicon, the female director of the hounsis (Simpson 68). The diviner of the Regla Arara-Dajomi is the previously mentioned bokono or bokor, "one who serves the loa with both hands" and practices magic. The divination system the bokor practices is called Fa, which descends from the Yoruba Ifa and is often identified with the idea of destiny itself, which is conceived as the text written by Mawu and lived out by humans. These re flections anticipate some recent critical theories on the operations of a pri mordial inscription involved in the constitution of experience.' The belief in Mawu s writing encourages a certain fatalistic, although not quietistic, trust in the divine. Fa also names the composure that the Fon admire in the bokor:

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IN o (inter Six the quality of keeping cool, poised, staying fresh. As Zuesse observes. Fa sets the bokor apart and above the world of passion represented by the vaudousi followers. The Vaudou deities matter litde in the more transcendent levels of Fon teachings because "Fa, in short, works as a depersonalization of the Fon cosmos," an idea consonant with Deren's concept of principles higher than their temporal manifestations (Zuesse 210). It should be noted that a parallel relation persists in Lucumi society between Santeria proper and the Ifa cult, which overlap on many counts but constitute different orders within the religion. With certain similarities to the Congo biometaphysics, Vaudou doctrine teaches that all human beings are made up of certain invariant components. The corps cadavre is the physical body, a living corpse. Several "souls" are said to reside in this "cadaverous" body destined for death.The ti bon angc or "good little angel" is the spirit of individuality that leaves the body in dreams. Also called ti-z'ange, or non-ange, this soul may be captured by the bokor in conjurations. (Simpson says however that witches and bokors in Haiti work on the separable gros-bon-ange [68].)The gros-bon-ange, as Davis defines it, is the energy that gives life and sentience to the body. This soul coincides with the intan gible spirit that inYoruba doctrine gives life and animation to the body: emi, a personal force identified with the breath and breathing (Idowu 169). In Vaudou belief, on the other hand, the n'dme or "spirit of the flesh" gives form to the body; and the z'ctoile is the individual's heavenly counterpart and the holder, or "star," of destiny, similar to the Lucumi ori chosen in theYoruba heaven by the soul prior to birth. Zombification deprives the person of a ti bon ange and therefore of personality; a shell of his former self, the Zombi is only corps cadavre, gros bon ange, and n'ame, and a mambo may hold the ti bon ange captive in a jar, pot, or other receptacle (Davis 218-19; Simpson 68).This preoccupation with capturing souls does not appear in Afro-Cuban literature with the frequency that it does in Vaudou lore. Orishos or Loos Many of theYoruba orishas are said to have their caminos arards, that is, a Vaudou aspect or incarnation. The babalao Samba confirms as much in telling Hwesuhunu, in Courlander's The African, "Your Fon vodoun, they the same as the orisha, only they got different names" (173). Cabrera s Arara informant Salako identifies "Nana Buluku" (in Haiti, she is "Nananboulouku") as both a Lucumi and Arara avatar of Obatala, who is also known as Akkado in Pinar del Rio. Salako also names Mabu and Frekete as Obatalas of Dahomeyan prov enance (M 307, 313).

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VcrsiMS fVulN o 01 Among other correspondences, the Lucumi Babalii-Aye or San Lazaro, ac cording to some, came from Dahomey as Sagpata or Chankpana; others say that he originated inYorubaland but traveled to the west during his exile, to return later to his birthplace. The Arara call Eleggua by the names Afra, Ogguiri elu, Makenii, or Keneno, and they do not, as do the Lucumi, spray him with jan, or cane liquor (M 35, 71, 73, 96, 232). Like the Lucumi orishas, the loas are identified with natural phenomena and the elements, and yet, as men tioned before with reference to Deren's account, resist strict identification with them, unlike the more earthbound orishas. Nor are the loas set into an unchanging Olympus: "No one knows the name of every loa because every major section of Haiti has its own local variation," and that means that cer tain loas worshipped by one zone's populace may be unknown to another's (Hurston 138). Although there may have existed more than seven pantheons or classes of loa on Haiti, nowadays each loa falls into one of two groups, corresponding to the two major traditions. The loa originating in Dahomey or Yorubaland are the Rada, so-called after the Dahomeyan port city of Arada, the name derived from that of the holy city Allada. The other major tradition, the PetroLemba, traces its double name to don Juan Felipe Pedro, the early Vaudou leader famed for his violent dancing, and to the Kongo trading center known as Lemba, belonging to the Kikongo (Hurston 139; Deren 328, 335). Rada and Petro therefore designate two "classes" of deities. One looks to the gen tler Rada loas, led by the oldest god or ancestor "Dambala Ouedo FredaTocan Dahomey," to bring peace and do "good" work. Rada is thus identified with the "cool" qualities of peace and reconciliation, and Rada serviteurs wear the all-white clothing and head scarves symbolic of this branch's ideal of purity Carpentier in El reino de este mundo identifies the rebel leader Mackandal as a houngan of the Rada rites (REM 29). On the other hand, the loas in the Petro-Lemba branch are willing to do harmful magic in ceremonies alleg edly inspired by the original Carib and Arawak inhabitants of Hispaniola. At the head of the Petro branch is the trinity of Baron Samedi, Baron Cimetiere, and Baron Crois, the lords of the graveyard. Petro is identified with spells and protection against evil and therefore with personal attributes considered "hot." Some loas, such as the Haitian Ogoun, have aspects or avatars in both Rada and Petro groups (Simpson 65). In Davis's interpretation, "the Rada have come to represent the emotional stability and warmth of Africa, the hearth of the nation" (46). On the other hand, as Thompson reports, the gun-powder-charged Petro altar of the houmfort temple itself expresses a "notion of salvation through extremity and intimidation."

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1)1 o Chapter Six Whereas the Rada vaudoux dress in cool white, the angry Petro spirits blaze in the red of fire and blood (FS 164, 181). The loas worshipped by Vaudou society are also called les esprits, zanges, and les mystcres, and their list includes hundreds of names, of both African and Haitian origin (Simpson 65). Of these names for the vaudoux, both loa and mystere derive from the Yoruba l'awo, "mystery," which forms part of the name babalawothe Ifa diviner known as "father of mysteries." From this Yoruba word also derives the Haitian Creole name for priest, papaloi (FS 166). Like the orishas and mpungus of Cuba, the loas tend to syncretize with the Catholic saints. As Melville Herskovits states, the saint's image in Haiti consti tutes an "outward symbol of the psychological reconciliation" between the Catholic saints and African deities, and that reconciliation has occurred even in West Africa (Life 278). Hurston also recognizes this syncretization between the Catholic hagiography and the Ewe-Fon and Kongo pantheons, evident in the practice of purchasing and displaying lithographs of the saints to repre sent the loas. She notes however that "even the most illiterate peasant knows that the picture or the saint is only an approximation of the loa" (Hurston 138). Simpson reports three distinct interpretations he gathered in the Plaisance region concerning the relationship of loas and saints. One group believes that the loas, who live "under the water," communicate with saints, who reside in heaven. This vision is consonant with the schema of the BantuKongo cosmogram examined in chapter 5. The loa are said to meet with the saints midway, between earth and heaven, conveying the concerns of hu mans to the saints, who then may communicate those concerns to God. A second school of thought holds that each loa corresponds to a saint. Accord ing to a third view, "the saints and the loa are bitter enemies" (Simpson 65). The following series of brief profiles will characterize the most promi nent loas of northern Haiti and include mention of their personality traits, attributes, and, when appropriate, syncretizations. The profiles are drawn primarily from Simpson (66-67, table 3.1); from Thompson (FS 166-67); and from Hurston, Deren, and Metraux, passim. Above both the Rada and the Petro deities sits Mawu, or in Creole, Bondieu or Grand Met. In the beginning, Mawu (or Mahou), created the universe, upon which he would write the narrative of human destiny. Like his Yoruba equiva lent Olodumare, he is the supreme god who knows all and can do all, but he prefers to remain distant from the creation he authored. Mawu is an an drogynous deity who becomes feminine in order to join with a masculine aspect, Lisa; together, Mawu and Lisa are symbolized by the moon and

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fwitis if liiiii o m the sun (FS 176). After creating the universe, a weary Mawu bestowed wis dom and power to the subordinate spirits named vaudoux, loas, esprits, or mysteres: those who master the natural elements and control the lives of mortals. Their connection with Mawu explains the Dahomeyan expression recorded by Price-Mars: "Vodoun e gui Mahounou," "The Spirit is a thing (a creature) of God" (97). Serviteurs at any rate prefer intercourse with the more personable loas who, like the Afro-Cuban orishas, deign to come down to earth and mingle with the faithful through the rite of possession in which the work of "the hand of divine grace" is seen. It will be recalled that the loas of the Rada class are headed by Damballah and those of the Petro by the Vaudou triumvirate of Baron Samedi, Baron Cimetiere, and Baron Crois. All good things flow from Damballah, the benefi cent and powerful. Damballah, represented as the Great Serpent, is "Li qui retti en ciel (He who lives in the sky)." Damballah gives permission for cer emonies dedicated to the other spirits. Worshippers hold him in awe, they supplicate him and render "service" to him as to his representatives. Unlike the Afro-Cuban Olofi, whom he resembles, Damballah has few stories in which he figures as a character (Hurston 139, 141, 143, 170). He is often identified with St. Patrick because the saint's icon displays a snake, and the iron snake-totem of Damballah, Carpentier notes, is often found on Vaudou altars (MC 292). Yet Damballah is more commonly identified with Moses, whom the Old Testament associated both with a serpent and with certain miraculous powers. Damballah drinks rum and cures grave illnesses. As the Great Serpent, he is often depicted as embraced with his mate Ayida Hwedo or Uedo, symbol ized by the rainbow or a smaller coiled snake, in a union of male and female principles (Simpson 176). Damballah merged with Ayida Hwedo is there fore the great serpent-rainbow who stretches out in a great arc across the sky after the rain. Deren writes that Damballah and Ayida even coil around the cosmos; our world is an egg offered to this supreme serpent god (115-16). In addition to doubling the rainbow of Ayidah Hwedo, the snake also serves as Damballah s "maid servant," his bonne. For the serviteur, Damballah is "the highest and most powerful of all the gods"; he is "good," "the great source." In sacrifices he prefers offerings of the white hens or cocks and also accepts sweet wine and white pigeons. His day is Wednesday (Hurston 139, 141-43). Agasu has noYoruba equivalent for he is the legendary ancestor of all the Fon. In tracing the genealogy proceeding from this euhemeristic deity, Thompson writes that Agasu s descendants founded Allada. After the throne

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IM o (iflpttrSiz of Allada passed to his eldest son, Agasu's younger sons went on to rule the cities of Ajase-Ipo andAbomey (FS 165). Papa Ogoun, like the Fon Gu and the Yoruba Oggun, is master of the forge and a fierce deity of war. The saber-wielding Ogoun Feraille is often identi fied with the militant, authoritarian Saint Jacques, or Saint James the Greater (the Spanish Santiago), depicted in lithographs as an armored knight (Metraux 61). The ritual slashing of the air with Ogoun s gubasa blade signi fies a cutting through the material world. Deren describes Ogoun as a violent revolutionary hero: "Intense, ready to fly into a rage, he periodically shouts: 'Foutre tonerre!' (By thunder!) which is his special epithet, or announces: 'Grains moin fret!' (My testicles are cold)his particular way of demanding a drink of rum" (133). To invoke Ogoun is to fire up the warrior in those who serve him (Hurston 177). Taylor describes the iron-god in similar terms: "A strong protector, Ogoun provides immunity against attack, and weapons for war." The Haitian Ogoun has absorbed attributes that further identify him with the Fon Hebyosso and the Yoruba Shango, who gives Ogoun his association with fire and lightning. Indeed, the former has become a "mani festation" of the latter, as the Haitian "Ogoun-Shango" (Taylor 116, 117). One aspect of Ogoun, named Loco Atissou, possesses knowledge of herbs and medical treatments; he helps the houngan to diagnose diseases and to prescribe cures. In this incarnation he seems to correspond to the Yoruba Osain. Saint Joseph is his Catholic double; his day, Wednesday. Loco Atissou, like Ogoun, is fond of rum (Hurston 152-53). Papa Legba is already familiar as theVaudou counterpart of the Lucumi trick ster Eshu-Eleggua and as the Catholic Saint Peter. In Haiti as in Cuba he guards doorways and crossroads. He is descended from the Fon Legba, whose as cendancy over the other vaudoux springs from his connection with divine wisdom, the transcendental center of the knowledge-reality that holds sway over the passions of the gods (Zuesse 208). Because Legba allows or facilitates communication between realms, it is appropriate that the temple-patio's center post, the poteau-mitan along which the loas are said to descend between worlds, also bears the name of potcau-Legba (Deren 97). Like Eshu-Eleggua in the Cuban Regla de Ocha, Papa Legba Attibon ("Legba of the Good Wood"; that is, of the poteau-mitan) enjoys the privilege of receiving the first prayers and first offerings in Vaudou ceremo nies because he is the one who watches all entrances and calls on the other deities. Legba customarily stands at the gate of the houmfort, or "holy of holies," and at the entrance to the cemetery. Because he also stands watch over the crossroads, he is also called Baron or Maitre Carrefour. Not usually

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Twins if VHJU o If I identified with the childish prankster of Lucumi myth, for the Haitian peas ants Papa Legba is more apt to appear as an aged man who limps and sup ports himself with a cane, often carrying both a straw pouch, the sac pailk or macoute, and an exaggeratedly large phallus. Also syncretized with John the Baptist, Legba eats only roasted foods, offered to him in a macoute slung from a tree branch. These foods include the "zinga" rooster (with white and black specks), and "corn, peanuts, bananas, sweet potatoes, chicken, a to bacco pipe for smoking, some tobacco, some soft drinks" (Hurston 151). The mulatta loa Erzulie is the Fon Aziri and the Yoruba Oshun. She is the river goddess, present in the sacred falls of Saut d'Eau, who intervenes in matters of love. For this reason her archetype resembles that of the Greek Aphrodite. She is also associated with the moon and prosperity. Hurston char acterizes Erzulie Freda as a "perfect" object of desire, promising erotic bliss by all her bodily signs and accoutrements. Her appearance and attributes are listed in Hurston s account: Erzulie is said to be a beautiful young woman of lush appearance. She is a mulatto and so when she is impersonated by the blacks, they powder their faces with talcum. She is represented as having firm, full breasts and other perfect female attributes. She is a rich young woman and wears a gold ring on her finger with a stone in it. She also wears a gold chain about her neck, attires herself in beautiful, expensive raiment and sheds intoxicating odors from her person. To men she is gorgeous, gracious and beneficent. She promotes the advancement of her devotees and looks after their wel fare generally. She comes to them in radiant ecstasy every Thursday and Saturday night and claims them. (145) Simpson adds that those possessed by Maitresse Erzulie are "[tjranquil, aris tocratic, and coquettish"; she "[pjersonifies gentleness, sensitiveness, and health"; in addition she "[sjpeaks several languages" (67). Many in Haiti know the love song dedicated to the possessive, alluring loa. Like the Cuban Ochiin, Erzulie is syncretized with the Blessed Virgin, but in her other selves she can turn "maliciously cruel, for not only does she choose and set aside for herself, young and handsome men and thus bar them from marriage, she frequently chooses married men and thrusts herself between the woman and her happiness" (Hurston 45). Erzulie *s veve symbol is a heart. In the houmfort room kept for this goddess, there are "pink and white dresses" and, on a dressing table, "a wash-basin, towel, soap, comb, lipstick, nailbrush and orange-stick." Another of her avatars is Erzulie ge-rouge, or "the redeyed": an old, frightening woman belonging to the Petro branch who is

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m o (lipttrfii called upon by harm-intending bokors. Generally, though, Erzulie shows af fection and loves eggs, rice flour, white pigeons, and Madeira wine (Metraux 64, 80). The Fon Sakpata was adopted by the Yoruba as Chankpana or Shokpana, by the Afro-Cubans as Babalu-Aye, and by the Haitians as Sabata or Sousous Pannan.The god of smallpox has skin covered with ulcers and favors pork and red cocks. In Haiti he is seen as malicious and cruel, unlike the "Lord of the World" of Lucumi religion, whose syncretization with San Lazaro has soft ened his image in Cuba. The identifying signs of Agwe-Taroyo, loa of the sea and ships, include shells, small boats, paddles, madrepore corals, and litde fish made of metal. AgweTaroyo, resembling the Lucumi Olokun, likes to drink champagne and eat sheep and fowls. The apparent equivalent to the Lucumi Orisha-Oko among the vaudoux is Zaka, lord of agriculture. Called "cousin" by those who know him, he wears the peasant's straw hat, carries the macoute satchel and smokes a clay pipe (Metraux 63). The Guede or Gede family have been identified above as the Haitian loas of death, often invoked in spells. In portraits, the Guedes look dead, wear black, and carry a knife. Guede himself, in the singular, is also the loa who idealizes or deifies the character of the Haitian peasant. When he comes down, he smokes a cigar, drinks a clairin mixed with fresh nutmeg and hot peppers and speaks in nasal tones (Hurston 232-33).The Guede who presides over the cemetery and the entire grim family is Baron Samedi, paired with his female consort, Madame Brigitte. Baron Samedi dresses like an undertaker, in black suit complete with top hat and cane. His emblems are the skull and crossbones and the gravedigger s tools. Also known for his "lascivious sen sual gestures," the clownish sovereign of the cemetery also symbolizes eroti cism and debauchery, according to Deren, for he embodies not only the death drive but sexual desire. He is the loa the bokors invoke to change their shape, to mix a poison, to bind up a paquet-congo charm or to create a zombi (Deren 112-13; Metraux 66, 104).The zombi-making bokors in fact look to Baron Samedi for support: when bringing a corpse "back to life," they call on him to "hold that man [qucmbe n'homme na]" (Taylor 105). The Fon Hohovi and the Yoruba Ibeyi became the Marossa twins of Haitian myth, corresponding to Kainde andTaewo, the jimaguas of Lucumi myth. In the northern part of Haiti, the Marassas, along with the dead, are invoked in every Vaudou ritual (Simpson 68, 297). The Fon market god Aizan merged with the sea goddess Avrekete to form

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VenJtniflnlM o Iff the Haitian loa known as Aizan-Velekete. Similar fusions of identities and ab sorptions of characteristics account for the absence of Yemaya and Ochosi in the Haitian pantheon (FS 167). The Vaudou serviteur lives a life amidst these loas, recognizing AgweTaroyo in the sea, Erzulie Freda in love, Legba in communication, Ogoun in fire and metallurgy, and Guede in death (Davis 206).The loas impose taboos and require offerings and sacrifice from the whole hierarchy: serviteur, mambo, hounsis, bokor, and houngan. In exchange for this service, the vaudoux will grant them health, protection, and assistance. Denied these of ferings, they can also bring down misery in the form of crop failure, illness, and even death (Simpson 68). It has been pointed out that many of the loas correspond to the orishas of Cuba. Agwe-Taroyo, to give another example, is the loa of the seas who re sembles Olokun; he is syncretized with Saint Ulrich and depicted with the emblems of armor and a fish. Then there are others that seem to have no exact correspondence. Of local origin is Baron Samedi, the lord of the dead. As these predications may suggest, the loas like the orishas may be further divided into the deities of earth, air, fire, and water, and they give the model and pattern for human passions. They are supplemented by the local gods that dwell in trees, stones, and other natural objects. Rit and Writing The principal mode of signification in Vaudou is ritual, especially that of dance and possession. Earlier I described ceremonies as complex forms of communication among members of the group, giving the context and gath ering members together for communication, mirroring thereby the phatic function in the communicative act. Despite Vaudou s relative lack of narrative, the talk of Vaudou society, its langage, is already imbued with divinity, for the sacred tongue is said to have descended from Damballah s cosmic hissing (Taylor 99). Essential knowledge in Vaudou society is transmitted mainly in the ceremonies, and there are many. Some Vaudou ceremonies take place before the altar, called pe, which bears similarities to the Lucumi or Mayombe altar in Cuba. One places chromolitho graphs of the saints on the pe, as well as attributes, such as Damballah s iron snake or beads, and plates of food, sacred stones, flags with images of the saints, rattles, liquor, and candles (Simpson 68). Offerings are placed in niches of the tiered altar. Other sacred objects may include soul-containing govis jars, or jars containing crucifixes; cards, rattles, a Kongo charm (nkisi), and perhaps a human skull (FS 182-83).

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in o (kfttrfiz Collective ritual takes place in the Vaudou temple s covered courtyard or patio, the aforementioned peristyle, reserved for dancing and possessions. The peristyle's central post or poteau mitan, raised upon its circular socle and embellished with symbols representing Papa Legba, Damballah, and Ayida Hwedo, constitutes a kind of axis mundi connecting the upper and lower worlds. It therefore functions as the kind of concrete centering "metaphor" that focuses the personal energies of the serviteurs when the drumming and dancing heat up. Veve ground-signs drawn around it reinforce the centering, gathering function of the sacred post (FS 181). Carpentier reconstructs some Vaudou elements of musical culture in colo nial Saint Domingue in his La musica en Cuba. The beating bamboula drums of the Rada ritual could be heard in the slaves' houmfort along with the shaking of the belt rattles called bran-bran sonnette. The serviteurs would sing Creole songs of Fon origin, including the yanvalous and the dahome-z'epaules. In the presence of the ceremonial drum named tambor ossotor, the believers invoke Erzulie, Papa Legba, and Ogoun Ferraille (MC 124). Other ceremonial drums in clude the boulatier, the sirgohn, and "the thundering hountah, which controls the mood and the movement of the dancers" (Hurston 17 3). The ascon gourd, filled with seeds or covered in a network of rattling beads and snake verte brae, resembles the Afro-Cuban shekere. The ascon is played to the chant that calls on Papa Legba to open the doors and thus permit the other loas to enter the houmfort; in such ceremonies it is often accompanied by a small bell. Chachas (ratdes) are shaken and ogans (iron bars) are beaten as well (Hurston 152; Deren 325; Simpson 297). Certain gestures, endowed with sacred or profane meaning, signify in the language of bodily movement. Commenting on the gestural language of Vaudou society, Henry Drewall explains that "[g]iving with both hands signi fies . the union of social and spiritual worlds, for the left is used in greet ings by orisa (that is, possessed worshippers) to mortals. Thus it is a sanctified gesture of giving" (FS 272n. 16). Charms or fetishes add their poetic power to the Vaudou practice. The Haitian practice of tying up magic charms with ribbons or silk bindings origi nated in Kongo culture. Cousins to the Cuban nkangues, the wound-up charms called pacquets-congo are adorned with sequins, beads, and feathers. Their construction itself signifies, by analogy, the magic that "ties up" a lover, en suring that he or she does not stray. Fittingly, the word nkongue in Kongo means "one who arrests." Famous pacquets-congo remembered by Thompson include one called Simbi makaya, "simbi-of-the-leaves," and Reine Kongo, "Queen of the Kongo" (FS 126-28).

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fmiwoffflifoi o IM Other ceremonies or ritual practices of Vaudou society resemble AfroCuban rituals from the Lucumi, Abakua, and Bantu traditions. A special mass or a drumming ceremony, like the Cuban misa espiritual or the guemilere, respectively, may be held for a specific loa. Haitians say that certain stones belong to the loas or that they are loas or have loas themselves. "The way to tell whether a stone has a loa or not," writes Hurston, "is to cup it in the hand and breathe upon it. If it sweats then it has a spirit in it. If not, then it is useless." The right stone for a certain loa will have the right color and quality, and it will be consecrated and set upon a white place where it will be wor shipped. Such a stone may be passed on from generation to generation (Hurston 158). Like practitioners of Santeria, serviteurs will "feed" the loas inhabiting the stones of their altars with offerings of blood (Simpson 297). All Vaudou ceremonies begin with homages to a number of loas and in the proper order: first, one prays to Papa Legba, opener of doors and oppor tunities; second, to Ogoun Loco Attison, "[m]ystere of work and knowl edge"; third to Mah-lah-sah, guardian of the threshold. Appeals to these loas, preceding the greeting to Damballah, will increase the chances that the peti tion in question will be heard. Last in order of appeals is Guede, Lord of the Dead (Hurston 142; Deren 93n.). Through drumming, singing, and dancing, in the light of candles or torches, the participants in the Vaudou ceremony prepare a physical and psy chological atmosphere propitious for a possession, which, as in Afro-Cuban rituals, is the centerpiece of Vaudou ritual and the aim of dancing and entrancement. This possession can arguably be read as a performance as well, for a subject possessed by a loa in effect acts out gestures and movements "chosen" from a repertoire of coded behaviors. Like the believers of Regla de Ocha with their orishas, "[f]ollowers of the loa know how their loa dress, talk, act, and even eat; they know their ritual symbols and sacred drawings, the music and songs to which the loa respond" (Taylor 99). As the prime objective of worship, possession consists in "havfing] loa in the head." Giving life and embodiment to the loa, possession thus allows the spirit to "mount" the serviteur, who for this purpose is called cheval or "horse" (Deren 101n.). Extraordinary things happen during possession. Davis reports seeing one hounsi who, mounted by her loa, grabbed burning sticks, licked them, and ate the fire. She then released the brands and fell back, caught by the mambo. That hounsi had held the hot coal in her mouth for three minutes without inflicting apparent harm to herself (46-47). Thompson describes a repeated drama of possession in which the cheval of Ogoun grasps a red-hot iron bar

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IN o (hopterSii with bare hands. Although, as Thompson comments, this feat could indicate a "[d]eep mastery of self" (FS 172-73), one also notes in possession an undeniable dispossession of the subject's own self, or a trance-induced self-alienation by which mastery is ceded to the possessing loa. A possessed Maman Loi in Carpentier's El reino de cste mundo shows such ambiguous mas tery when she runs to the kitchen, immerses both her arms in boiling oil, and withdraws them, unscathed (REM 21). The apparent passivity or intransitivity on the part of the possessed with relation to the loa translates, paradoxically, into the chevals transitive "mastery" over fire, heat, and pain. The nature of possession remains a mystery nonetheless. Past observers have interpreted the possession ritual as a manifestation of psychoneurosis and for that reason negative; as a socially acceptable form of insanity in a harsh environment; or as a normal spiritual expression in the Haitian con text (see Lewis 191). Explained as a holy act of descent or mounting, posses sion is also said to open communications between humans and the divinities. Writing of this mediumistic possession, Zuesse observes that the ritual is structured like a marriage, turning the possessed into a vaudousi or "mate of the god" through whom the god will speak. In this way, desire is channeled toward the unifying identification with divinity (Zuesse 206). In a typical ceremony, the mambo priestess invokes these spirits first by an act of writing: that is, the aforementioned drawing of graphic symbols called veves on the floor of the peristyle. In the veves, designs representing specific loas, are drawn at the ends of rays that branch out toward the four cardinal points from the poteau-mitan (FS 189).The veve of Legba as Maitre Carrefour displays a cross and that of Baron Cimetiere, a coffin, to give two examples. This ground-writing, constituting a scriptural foundation for the ceremony, calls the loas into attendance and prepares the stage or map on which the devotees will sing and dance. Yet the straight or curvy lines of the veve are not literally inscribed or scrawled on the ground. Instead, the mambo (or houngan) pours the lines in varied materials, whose ingredients could be cornmeal, tafia (raw rum), gunpowder, or syrup (see Simpson 68). Other ingredients could include "wheat or maize flour, crushed bricks, coffee grounds or ash," but they are chosen according to the requirements of the divinity that would be invoked (Metraux 80). Each of the diverse mystic signs belongs to a cryptographic system that recalls the Efik nsibidi and the Bakongo yowa cosmograms. The system of the veve is complex and deserves future study. For now we may note the import of veves that have been printed or alluded to in works

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YtniiisifYiriti o III of Caribbean literature, where the veve has often taken on new symbolic values apart from its exact signification in Vaudou ritual. In Pierre Clitandre's Cathedrale du mois aout (Cathedral of the month of August, 1982), veves precede the beginnings of the novel's major sections and thus invite a divine will to manifest itself in action culminating in the mass insurrection of the novel's conclusion. In Edward Kamau Brathwaite's poem "Veve," the sacred writing, escaping the toils of Eurocentric thinking and philosophic systems, connects the visible and the invisible, the human and the divine.The "broken ground" on which Brathwaite's griot-houngan-speaker inscribes a new tradition is hallowed by the slave's sacrifice and controlled by a crippled Legba-Elegbara: that ground is a gathering space for fragments of memory, potsherds of the shattered vessels of a community. The broken ground is also the soil of the New World prepared for a new sowing of the divine Word, the veve: For on this ground trampled with the bull's swathe of whips where the slave at the crossroads was a red anthill eaten by moonbeams, by the holy ghosts of his wounds The Word becomes again a god and walks among us ("The Arrivants" 266) By mythopoetic vision, writing is reinvested with the centering and ingath ering power of veve and thus bridges the distance between heaven and earth. In writing on the ground, the slave descendants rewrite the ground of com munity itself, refiguring the foundations of identity, history, and worship in a metaphor of divine inscription. In Vaudou ceremony, once the veves are drawn, the mambo goes on to pour libations of holy water, flour, corn, and liquor at the four cardinal points and on the poteau mitan. The three major drums play the particular rhythm of the loa to which the ceremony is directed, accompanied by the shaking of chachas (rattles) and the beating of ogans (iron bars). After some singing and praying, sacrifice is made to Legba; the initiates are led into the houmfort. The dancing and drumming go on and can continue for hours, with a num ber of possessions taking place (Davis 43). The houngan ends the ceremony by leading more prayers and singing, leaving offerings of food for the loa and distributing the remaining food to the hungry devotees (Simpson 69, 297).

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Ill o (kpterSii As alluded to earlier, the Vaudou dance performed around the poteau mitan has itself been called a form of "writing" executed over the already inscribed veve, recalling the "palimpsest," calling the divine into presence and making the present divine. Serviteurs have referred to their dancing itself as a way of "writing" with their feet, as if to underscore the kinetic, gestural mode of expression fundamental to their religion. A subsequent act of erasure is what allows the divine to manifest itself: "These signs, these veve are then erased by the dancing feet of devotees, circling around the pillar, even as, in spirit possession, the figures of these deities are redrawn in their flesh" (FS 191). By the act of putting the sacred pictograms sous rature (under erasure), an arche-writing disappears but enters and reinscribes itself again in the body of serviteur who may then speak the divine word of the vaudoux. Other Vaudou rituals address the dead, who matter to the serviteurs as they do to the Cuban Lucumis and Congos.The manger des morts, or feast of the dead, is also called wete* loa non tctc yum mort. This ceremony centers on the offering of birds and libations to one s departed. Its purpose is to remove the spirit from the head of the deceased serviteur, for otherwise the spirit would go to the bottom of the water and wait there until the manger des morts is celebrated (Hurston 162-63). Courlanders The African reconstructs another slave ceremony of Fon origin for the dead in its Georgia plantation setting. The character Samba reminds the gathered devotees that the living should help the dead if the dead are to help the living. Samba then guides Hwesuhunu ("Wes"), the novel's young Fon protagonist, in leading the invocation. Hwesuhunu pours water on the ground and "calls the role": "Legba, carry the word for us, ago-e! Respect to all the vaudoux, ago-e! Mawu, the grand father of all, respect! Ogoun, who lives in this house, and all his kin, respect! Nananbuluku, Sobo, Obatala, Damballa, Hevioso, Azaka, respect!" Samba then adds the call to the "Nago" (Yoruba) orishas: "Oya, Orula, Panchagara [Oshun],Yemaya" (Courlander, .African 107). As these accounts of ritual suggest, Vaudou is a beautiful and poetic lived religion, founded on a mystical, mythical, histrionic attitude toward the real. Its "medicine" is that of transcendence, but the same medicine can be turned against those it would harm. With its myth, ritual, doctrine, and pharma copeia, Vaudou constructs a self-sufficient cultural world, a mythic-existen tial domain that affirms identity as it at the same time subjects that identity to appropriation by a variety of causes and programs, as examples from his tory and literature will demonstrate in the sections to follow. For as it is inserted into history, Vaudou remains trapped within its own vision of fatal-

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Terutisifliiiii o m ity and magical causation in which evil is seen as a perennial and metaphysi cal force rather than as the product of historical forces. Its signs are dazzling, but it still lacks an historicocritical perspective from which to assess or chal lenge the objective conditions of unfreedom (seeTaylor 122, 125). Vaadeu in History Vaudou's history can be traced back to the African wars between Dahomey and the Yoruba kingdoms, which contributed to the decline of the Yoruba and the expansion of the West African slave trade. For many from the Yoruba and other neighboring peoples were sold in exchange for European goods and exported through the southern kingdoms of Allada and Ouida (Law 226). The Dahomeyans, desirous of carrying on a coastal trade with the European armies as Widah and Ardra did, found it necessary first to conquer the com petition: Great Ardra in 1724 and Widah shortly thereafter. Yet Dahomey's geographical position left it open to westward Yoruba invasions and migrations. Oyo would restore its dominance over Dahomey in campaigns be tween 1730 and 1750, exacting a tribute, and by relocating trade to nonDahomeyan ports including Badagry, Lagos, and Porto Novo. Claiming to come to the aid of Widah but in effect protecting its commercial ties with the Europeans, the Yoruba thus attacked the Dahomeyans and conquered them. When Gezo ascended to the Dahomeyan throne in 1818, he freed his people from Yoruba imperial rule. Yet Dahomey continued to pay a tribute to the Alafin of Oyo until 1827, when Oyo was engaged in war with Ilorin and when the pressure of Dahomeyan slave wars was doubled by other wars be tween Yoruba kingdoms (Eades 20). The kingdom restored some of its might by attacking Ketu in the year of the French Revolution (1789), taking some two thousand as captives and, presumably, as slaves. The Yoruba-Dahomey wars ended, not with a victory of one side over another, but with the Dahomeyan defeat by the French in 1892 (YSN 12). These wars and the westward migrations of Yorubas in this period al lowed the orishas to travel and undergo syncretizing metamorphoses into the loas of the Ewe and Fon nations of Dahomey, a process that Thompson describes as a "[f]usion and refusion of Yoruba spirits." The Yoruba occupa tions in Dahomey thus began the transculturation process that, interrupted by the French slave trade, recommenced in Haiti (FS 166). In the "European cockpit" that was the Caribbean, France in the mean time had acquired, in 1697, the western third of the island of Hispaniola through the Treaty of Ryswick.The approximately fifty thousand African slaves

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214 o Chapter Sii brought to the island at the beginning of the eighteenth century included peoples originating from Dahomey and Senegal; from the Yoruba, Ibo, Bamana, and Mande territories; and from the Kongo and Angolan civilizations. The majority of slaves in French Saint Domingue came from the Kongo and Angola. As in Cuba, these "Bantu" slaves developed a religion based on the belief in the intercession of the dead in human affairs and on a depen dence on charms to influence events. Ewe-Fon ideas emphasized a polytheis tic doctrine of the loa-orishas founded on an underlying monotheism that considered Mawu-Lisa to be the supreme god.These ideas gained ascendancy within a system of diverse and superimposed codes. Catholicism contributed images and figures from its liturgy, particularly those related to the interces sion of the saints (Simpson 64; FS 164).Thus developed the religion of the serviteurs, elaborating and widening its pantheon of neo-African deities and adding its layer to the Caribbean religious palimpsest. The manner in which Vaudou traveled to Cuba helps to explain its signifi cance to Afro-Cuban culture and literature. As mentioned earlier, the religion crossed with the black servants of those French planter families who, to avoid the vengeful violence unleashed by their erstwhile slaves, fled westward to the neighboring island in the 1790s. It is to their experience that Alejo Carpentier devotes the chapter "Santiago de Cuba" in El reino de cste mundo (63-67). In more recent times, Bastide notes, Haitians arrived in record numbers in 19135 as part of a wave of immigrant sugar workers coming in from various West Indian islands. Some 145,000 came from Haiti and an addi tional 107,000 from Jamaica. Eight thousand more Haitians arrived in 1941 (Bastide 146). The intermittent influx of Haitians bred the fear, among white or Creole Cubans at various times, of the "Haitianization of Cuba"; that is, of a situa tion in which black masses would predominate and overthrow the power structure as they did in Haiti, which would lead to Cuba's isolation by other nations and cause further exoduses and impoverishment (Perez Sarduy and Stubbs 5). If the existence of Vaudou in Haiti "has always been an embar rassment to the Western-oriented and educated elite," in Cuba too Africaninspired religion proved an embarrassmenta stigma, a sign of backward nessto the dependent bourgeoisie of this largest of Caribbean islands (Laguerre 19). The depiction of Haitians in Cuban writing, exemplified in the references to jEcue-Yamba-O! that opened this chapter, indicates from an external per spective the way in which the experience of migration has strengthened the faith of the migrants themselves. Serving the loa becomes an emblem of per-

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VersitRS t( Vd68 o IK sonal identity and a mechanism of defense after the passage westward to Oriente Province, as James Figarola points out. Uprooted, impoverished, and exploited as braccros or laborers in the cane fields, transplanted Haitians have often practiced Vaudou more actively than they did in Haiti in order to main tain a sense of themselves as a unique and proud minoritya minority within a minorityin a foreign land (SMD 22). Inasmuch as Vaudou culture played an active role in forming an antislavery ideology in Saint Domingue prior to the migration and contributed to the outbreak of the revolution on Saint Domingue, an overview of that his tory will help to frame the subsequent discussion of religion's role in the confrontation and in the period afterward. On the eve of the revolution, in 1791, some 465,429 slaves were dominated by some 30,836 whites and 27,548 free colored.The colony was tremendously productive: its nearly half a million slaves produced two-thirds of the value of France s total overseas trade (Laguerre 29). Inspired by their vaudoux-spirits, the Haitian peasantry rose to defy the imposition of forced labor on the plantations, fighting their revolution to overthrow their masters with machetes and other farming implements. Davis confirms that the slaves, armed with "knives and picks, [and] sticks tipped in iron," could challenge the bayonets and artillery of the French in the belief that their loas protected them or that in death they would return to their African homeland, Guinec.The Revolution lasted twelve years and turned back incursions not only by Napoleon's troops, led by the emperor's brother-inlaw Leclerc, but by the Spanish and the British as well (Davis 68, 67). Mod ern history's first successful slave revolt overthrew the colonial hold on the island and led to the founding of the second republic in the Americas and the first black republic in the world. For these reasons, Haiti became a symbol, although an ambiguous one, for anticolonial revolt. For with its triumph, the Haitian Revolution opened the doors to black despotism and terror. The state became the new slave master, with the mili tary as overseer. In his effort to compel peasants to stay on the plantations, Dessalines ordered mass executions or had "criminals" buried alive. The revo lutionary elite led byToussaint L'Ouverture fought to reconstruct the planta tion system, believing that the success of the revolution would have to be measured both by the continued freedom of the people and by their pros perity, and that these could be ensured only by continued agricultural pro ductivity. After emancipation, the former slaves were forced to leave their private plots and return to the plantations. So that Haiti could become strong enough to resist recolonization by France and other powers, Toussaint in fact

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IN o Cbiptcr Sii dictated that former slaves be assigned to plantation work gangs (Ott 161). Henri Christophe, both tyrant and benefactor to the nation, imposed a tenyear regime of forced labor that produced crops for export and filled the coffers of the treasury of the Northern Kingdom, allowing him to build the impressive palace of Sans-Souci and the Citadelle La Ferriere by 1820, when he was deposed (Davis 69-71; Ott 161). The Haitian Revolution, having deposed the white planters, then gave it self over to rule by a mulatto aristocracy, and this change brought no im provement to the lives of the former slaves, who made up some 85 to 90 percent of the total population of the newly renamed country. In the wake of the revolution, L'Ouverture s and Christophe s fears appeared to be well founded: agricultural productivity was low. Few were the opportunities for social mobility among this majority of peasants and urban poor, who found themselves undereducated, unemployed or underemployed, afflicted by pov erty and diseases (such as tuberculosis and malaria), and lacking in adequate doctors, hospitals, and health programs. In the continued climate of abject dispossession, many Haitians, deprived of the necessities of health care, would turn to traditional African-based practices for treatments or at least for relief from anxiety. Lacking nearly everything that would be necessary for a life worth living, the Haitian peasant even today finds some compensation in Vaudou, which continues to offer "meaningful explanations of reality and a basis for relationships with others" (Simpson 63). The roll call of Haitian leaders who may have practiced Vaudou in some form or another after the revolution indicates the manner in which the cult has been employed for partisan, antidemocratic ends. Stories concerning Vaudou *s role in politics abound. General Faustin Solouque, later Emperor Faustin I (1847-59), was reputed to have held Vaudou rituals in the national palace "in order to legitimate his own regime in the eyes of his black subjects" (Taylor 118). President Francois Antoine Simon (1906-11) did likewise. Hurston retells the stories surrounding the mambo Celestina, daughter of General Simon. A figure of mystery and awe in her own right, Celestina kept company with a consort, a pet goat named Simalo. It was rumored that Celestina was "married" to Simalo. It was commonly known that Simalo and Celestina's presence at the vanguard of Simon's troops made the rebelling soldiers invulnerable to enemy charges, and their victory under Alexis at Ansaa-veau brought Simon to the presidency. The story went that Celestina had called on Ogoun Feraille to protect her father's supporters, who marched from Aux Cayes to Port-au-Prince carrying the sign of the loa, namely, "their

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Versions of Vudou 1(1 coco macaque sticks to which had been tied a red handkerchief." For her prowess and power in that struggle, she became known as a "black Joan of Arc." Meanwhile, the Haitian upper classes chose to ignore or deny the pres ence of Vaudou in their society rather than acknowledge publicly a religious practice they called primitive and barbaric. Yet to the chagrin of these elites, it was said that Vaudou rituals were taking place in the national palace, not to mention the Sect Rouge ceremonies that were rumored to take place in the Mountain House, summer palace of the president. Another spate of stories told of a "divorce" between Celestina and her consort, after which Simalo soon died and was buried with pomp and honors in the cathedral of the capital. Celestina never remarried (Hurston 116-21). These anecdotes confirm the thesis that, although the Saint Domingue slaves could create an identity for themselves in a neo-African cultural code focused on Vaudou worship, that cultural code could be "co-opted" by oli garchies to serve ends opposed to the needs and interests of the masses. Although Vaudou inspired slave insurrection and even the Caco (or merce nary) uprising during the American occupation (1915-34), "the history of Vaudou in the postindependence period," as Taylor writes, "is largely a legacy of accommodation with oppressive neocolonial regimes" (117). Some twenty years after the fall of Simons regime, Dr. Francois Duvalier participated in creating a black nationalist cult of negritude of a specifically Haitian kind. Davis reports that the journal called les Griots (The storytellers), to whose editorial staff the young Duvalier belonged, espoused a new Hai tian nationalism in reaction to the American occupation of the island. One significant platform of les Griots was the demand that Vaudou be recognized as the official religion of Haiti, paving the way over the years for Duvalier to manipulate it for his own demagogic ends after winning the 1957 election. Duvalier, or "Papa Doc," made himself premier houngan of Haiti and declared himself the heir of the founders L'Ouverture, Dessalines, Petion, Christophe, and Dumarsais Estime. In public, Papa Doc dressed in black, and many identified him with the vaudou of death, Guede, or the loa of the cemetery, Baron Samedi. He surrounded himself with a coterie of houngan priests and sponsored the association of a dreaded secret police, the Ton Ton Macoute, with the dreaded Bizango secret society. This was the same Bizango society, named after the loup-garou or werewolf said to prey upon children, that was infamous for carrying out zombifications against its enemies (Davis 316). Duvalier himself reputedly turned the corpse of a political oppo nent into a zombi (Taylor 118). This approach actually succeeded in bringing some stability to Haiti. Through his circle of priests, some of them

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IN o (liptcrfii recruited into his administration, the elder Duvalier exercised dominion over the Haitian culture and its populace during seven years of arbitrary rule, then declared himself president for life in 1964. Jean-Claude, or "Baby Doc," availing himself of the same sort of political magic, carried on the family tradition under "Jean-Claudismus" for fifteen years more, until his ouster in 1986. Recently, in May of 1994, Emile Jonaissant, the nominal head of the military junta that had ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the presidency, invoked the principle of Haitian national sovereignty and the protection of Agwe-Taroyo in defiance of rumors that a U.S. invasion was imminent.2 Trapped as it was in the circularity of its own mythico-magical representations, Vaudou, as these periods of collusion with dictators suggest, had no critical perspective on the sociohistorical context, no viable alternative to Enlightenment reason, no agenda for emancipation. "There was nothing in trinsic to the Vaudou narrative order that demanded that the believer enter into a struggle for liberation" (Taylor 118). Carpentier's novella of the Haitian Revolution delivers the same verdict on the impotence of Vaudou to save the Revolution. At the same time, as we will see, Carpentier's version of Vaudou in history reiterates at another textual level the mythopoetic power of Vaudou's signs in order to shake apart the metaphysical scaffolding of the postcolonial world. TfetWirMstfMXiiflilii Patrick Taylor's distinction between the "mythic narrative" and the "liberat ing narrative" illuminates the ideological implications of Vaudou for both popular culture and literature, although Taylor's distinction must be both ex panded and problematized if it is to do justice to the complexity of AfroCaribbean religion. For Taylor, popular culture from its beginnings in the West Indies has always been a political culture of resistance: "African-based, European-influenced religious and aesthetic symbolism unified the commu nity in opposition to slavery and oppression" (xi). Narrative is one cultural means of transmitting tradition, producing communitarian cohesion, group identity, and social consciousness. Yet narratives distinguish themselves ac cording to the two divergent functions of narrative. First, mythic narrative, of which the Anancy tales are a prime example, may celebrate the cunning of the slave in outwitting his masters, but its mode of storytelling tends to fix the master/slave relationship into static, archetypal, and falsely universal terms. "There is no narrative imperative demanding the fundamental trans formation of the master-slave relationship itself" (Taylor 2). As such, mythic narrative depicts an atemporal, no-exit situation. Furthermore, inasmuch as

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Versions tf Viados o 21) it lacks an imperative for restructuring an unjust social order, it may be coopted, exploited for the ends of oppression and exploitation, a process for which Vaudou's "unliterary" narratives of mythic ritual provide a case study. On the other hand, liberating narrative, the second of Taylor's categories, engages authentic historical temporality and calls for a real overcoming of oppressive social structures. Refusing the mythic affirmation of the status quo, liberating narrative "makes a decisive break with mythical narrative when it goes radically beyond the latter to assert the necessity of freedom. It attacks mythical and ideological categories for sustaining oppressive situa tions that restrict and hide human freedom" (Taylor 3). In Taylor's view, Carpentier's narrative of Vaudou would be considered liberatory in affirm ing the slave's right to freedom, but it would have to break with Vaudou's mythical, mystifying narrative by revealing Vaudou's tendency toward regres sive complicity with the powers that be once it has played its liberating his torical role. Vaudou appears as just such a double-edged sword in Carpentier's El reino de estc mundo (1949). The novel's narration makes it clear that the loas are on the side of the slaves in the struggle. Sylvia Carullo has argued that Vaudou, as "protagonist" and "epicenter" of the novella, "serves as a pillar for the politi cal-ideological infrastructure" of the novel" (3). Yet the progressivist ideals of the Enlightenment, I would hasten to add, are for all that not discarded. One could say more accurately that the narrative of El reino is double-coded for the meaning of its signs depends on their European and Afro-Caribbean interpretive frameworksand indeed the novel, similar in this respect to Carpentier's jEcue-Yamlxi-O!, is about the double-coding that makes historical and literary meaning a transculturative matter.3 From a double perspective informed both by written histories and by the viewpoint of slaves who are serviteurs, the novel presents a peculiar recon struction of the period encompassing the Haitian Revolution. As SperattiPinero has plotted it, the action spans some eighty years: from the 1750s, with Mackandal's escape from the plantation to the mountains, to the early 1830s and the departure of Henri Christophe's family for the baths of Karlsbad (Pasos, 4) .4 The narrative consists of a series of vignettes presenting impressions of events comprising that history, some peripheral or seemingly irrelevant to the revolution. Many of the impressions are filtered through the consciousness of the protagonist Ti Noel, slave of the plantation owner Lenormand de Mezy.The vignettes are organized into twenty-six loosely con nected chapters recounting sometimes miraculous occurrences linked with the insurrections. These chapters are themselves distributed into five sections

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Ill o (Npterfii presenting the major phases of the novella s action. The most explicit refer ences to Vaudou occur in the first two of the five sections. The first section of the novel details Ti Noel's observations of colonial life, his apprenticeship to the Mandinga brujo (sorcerer) and storyteller Mackandal, Mackandal's injury in the trapiche or sugar mill and subsequent flight from the plantation, his reported metamorphoses into a series of animal shapes, his supervision of mass poisonings of colonists and their animals, and his public execution at the hands of the whites. In the beginning of this section, Ti Noel recalls the stories told by Mackandal. Contrary to the stereotype of a nonnarratistic Vaudou culture, Mackandal is a houngan storytellerhis Mandinga origins may justify his association with oralityand his voice is the very creative force of nommo so named by the Bakongo: he creates worlds in his words, evoking the figure of Kankan Muza, Muslim founder of the Mandinga empire (1297-1332), remembered for bringing writers to his court and for building mosques in his kingdom (Price-Mars 71). Mackandal's voice evokes other kingdoms: those of Adonhueso and those of the Nago, Popo, and Arada. His voice brings the myth of Damballah and the rainbow to life. Mackandal, we also learn, is an herbalist who becomes the cimarron leader of the secret campaign to poison the planters of the Plaine du Nord and their animals. After Mackandal loses his arm in the sugar mill and es capes from the plantation, he becomes a magical shape-changer, sometimes appearing at night "beneath the black goatskin with red-hot coals on his horns" (REM 33). In the Haitian national mythology, C. L. R. James confirms, the houngan "Makandal" is remembered as possessing immortality and supernatural pow ers of transformation (86). Thanks to the strength of the slaves' faith, sus tained by their talk and tales, Mackandal can "transform" himself into a se ries of animal forms, creating in this way the unifying and emboldening legend of his own figure: "Now, his powers were unlimited" (REM 33). In explicating the text, Carullo underscores the role of language in the novel's Vaudou occurrences, asserting that Mackandal's metamorphoses are not only referred to in words but realized in them: "the word in itself is 'nocturnal butterfly,' 'pelican,' 'green iguana,' 'unknown dog'" (5).That is to say, magic occurs in the very naming (nommo) of the thing. Mackandal even "escapes" execution "by the power of the word. His salvation becomes real through the cry that announces it" (Carullo 5). The cry Carullo cites is the "jMacandal sauve!" of the African spectators, brought to Cap Haitien to witness the spectacle, who believe that their leader has succeeded in flying from the bonfire in the shape of a butterfly (Carullo

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TersiMS if Intel o 111 5-6). Mackandal thus becomes an inspiring multivalent symbol for the slaves, yet synecdochically incarnating in his own person the power they possess as a group: "One day he would give the signal of the great uprising, and the Lords of Over There, headed by Damballah, by the Master of the Roads and by Ogoun, Master of Iron, would bring the lightning and the thunder, to unleash the cyclone that would complete the work of men" (REM 33). Mackandal's narrative, both mystical and liberating, furnishes Ti Noel and the other slaves with a protective knowledge of the loas, including Baron Carrefour or Elegba, powerful mystere of interpretations, who in effect au thorizes the slaves' reinterpretation of their conditions.5 The sense of collective identity and direction, founded on consensually validated interpretation, guides the slaves of Saint Domingue to turn the philosophical idea of independence into reality. Referring to the Haitian blacks galvanized by their Vaudou beliefs, Carpentier said on one occasion, "[I]t is going to be this pariah, this man situated on the lowest rung of the human condition, who will give us no less than the concept of indepen dence" (Novela, 182-83). Slave religion indeed translates the Enlightenment abstractions into practice, as in the midst of the first great uprising on the island Pere Labat is quoted as mentioning something the slaves call "vaudoux," and the plantation owners realize that it was this "secret religion that encouraged and brought them together [los solidarizaba] in their rebel liousness" (REM 62). Vaudou thus serves as a kind of "ideologia secreta" that raises the abstract ideals of the bourgeois French Revolution to a higher dia lectical level (Volek 158). Returning to Ti Noel's activities in the first chapter of El rcino, we see the slave scrutinizing the chromolithographs, hung in a bookseller's shop, of kings both European and African. In Ti Noels ensuing reverie, the slave re calls Mackandal's genealogical tales of the virile African kings, superior to the effeminate, faro-playing dandies of the French court. The African kings include the Dahomeyan King Da, the euhemeristic Da or Damballah, who is also the "incarnation of the Serpent, which is [an] eternal principle, neverending, and who romped mystically with a queen who was the Rainbow, mistress of the water and every childbirth" (REM 12). In "reading" the chro-mos, the slave of course grasps a symbol of his own group's identity in the myth of the wise Damballah Hwedo, the serpent merged with his consort the rainbow, Ayida Hwedo (Speratti-Pinero, Pasos, 130). In their mythic union, as referred to here and elsewhere, their love created the heavens, made the earth fecund, and infused spirit into blood so that sacrifice could bring hu mans into the Great Serpent's wisdom (Davis, 213-14, 330, 332).

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10 o (kipterSii Other Vaudou-informed readings are performed in Carpentier s text. A talk ing head entertains Ti Noel during a remembered visit to a fair; it further more suggests the Afro-Haitian belief that spirits may possess the head of a deceased, a ghostly presence that the ritual called dessounin (or dessoune) serves to exorcise (DALC 162). Other portents hint at the coming cataclysm. The calves' heads mounted in the butcher's window are juxtaposed with the wax heads of the wig display in the barber's window; the metaphor of an "abomi nable feast" in which those "white masters' heads" are served may anticipate, inTi Noel's mind, sacrificial beheadings to come (REM 10-11). The second chapter of the second section, "El Pacto Mayor" (The great pact), tells of the legendary meeting of the Plaine du Nord slaves in the Caiman Woods. Significantly, this chapter follows on the one entitled "The Daughter of Minos y Pasiphae," in which the theme of drama and theatrical ity is established in Mademoiselle Floridor's performance of Racine's Phaedra before an uncomprehending, literally captive audience of slaves (REM 48-49). By this juxtaposition of performances, Carpentier's rendition of "the great pact" foregrounds the theatrical element of a subsequent performance in which history and histrionics converge. First, the night sky as backdrop is filled with chilly rain, wind, and foreboding thunder, "breaking itself on the craggy profile of the Morne Rouge" (REM 52). Once again the narrative emphasizes the power of the voice's presence, but this time the speaker is Bouckman Dutty, the Jamaican, in whose words "[t]here was much of invo cation and incantation" (REM 51). The ceremony led by Bouckman in the Bois Caiman, according to an account recorded by C. L. R. James, included theVaudou elements of dance, invocation of the loa, and sacrifice (86). In his speech, indirectly delivered in Carpentier's narration, Bouckman mixes discourses. He refers to the latest developments of France (the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and the Decree of Pluviose that emancipated the slaves) and to the monarchical intransigence of the planter aristocracy. This he inter weaves with talk of a pact between the initiates on Saint Domingue and the "great Loas of Africa, so that the war may begin under the propitious signs." The signs already say that the war is between "our gods" and the God of the whites, who "orders the crime." Another sign to revolt is the dance to the war god "Fai Ogoun" by a "bony negresse" blandishing the god's character istic gubasa sabre (REM 52).The narration translates the Creole language of the Rada invocation, which names Ogoun's aspects or caminos: "Ogoun of iron, Ogoun the warrior, Ogoun of the forge, Ogoun field marshal, Ogoun of the lances, Ogoun-Chango, Ogoun-Kankanikan, Ogoun-Batala, Ogoun-

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Versions of Vaudou o IIJ Panama, Ogoun-Bakule." What follows is the sacrifice of the black pig, in whose blood all the participants will wet their lips (REM 53). (More will be said on Carpentier s Ogoun in an upcoming section devoted to Benitez Rojo s story.) Other historical sources and informants confirm the veracity of Carpentier's poeticized account and fill in some of its gaps. On the famous night of August 14, 1791, on top of the Bois Caiman, the Maroon leader named Bouckman Dutty did, according to those accounts, speak above the thunder, or he mixed his words with the thunder, and delivered the word of freedom to the hundreds of slaves gathered there. Among the leaders in at tendance were Jean Francois, Jeannot, and Biassou, all of whom Bouckman embraced after the sacrifice sealed the pact. A slave of the same Plantation Lenormand where Ti Noel and Mackandal labored, Bouckman understood the need for a cross-cultural agenda. Mindful of Mackandal's abortive attempt to lead a mass poisoning of the plantation owners, Bouckman continued the effort to channel religious feeling in the direction of revolt, with positive results: "loas were called upon to make known their will, and a pact was made between the slaves andVaudou spirits. By coming to supplicate Vaudou loas before the opening struggle, the slaves continued an old African tradi tion. Vaudou loas agreed not only to increase their force tenfold, but also to cover their enemies with all sorts of curses" (Laguerre, 61). With the cer emony completed, the burning and looting of plantations and the massacre of whites were not long in following. One of the testimonials recorded byDavis suggests the persistence of a certain cult of hero worship associated with the "Bwa Caiman" and other locales: "They fall within the same empire of thoughts. Our history, such moments, the history of Mackandal, of Romaine La Prophetesse, of Bouckman, of Pedro. Those people bore many sac rifices in their breasts.They were alive and they believed! We may also speak of a certain Hyacinthe who as the cannon fired upon him showed no fear, proving to his people that the cannon were water. And what of Mackandal! The one who was tied to the execution pole with the bullets ready to smash him but found a way to escape because of the sacrifice he did" (Davis 245-46, 304). Although some of the speaker's details diverge somewhat from Carpentier s version (REM 33-34, 79-80), they evince the manner in which the Haitian Revolution lives on in collective memory as a heroic narrative protagonized by Vaudou. Besides representing the collective subject of revolt in Carpentier's plot, Vaudou provides an infrastructure or subtext to which doubly coded Afro-

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214 o (lipttrSii Haitian signs, whether pivotal or ancillary to the main narrative action, may refer. As Speratti-Pifiero rightly asserts, Vaudou "intertwines itself closely in El rcino with events and circumstances. The divinities are not for decoration but active presences, whose secret millsslow, effective, implacablefunc tion without stopping until the appropriate time. All of this begins to impose itself when the reader enters into the Vaudou beliefs and into the character and attributes of the loas. Only then does one reach the most profound and significant level of the work" ("Noviciado" 113). Yet the loas in the text are actively "present" as names whose invocation suggests their absence as much as their presence.Their "secret mills" turn in a space of sacralized signs trans mitted in the song, storytelling, talk, iconography, speech making, and even "drumming" of the narrative. The reader experiences the absence of the loas, displaced by their substitutionary signs, as a gap between historical reality and an ideal, mythical supplement. Portuondo affirms that "[t]he novel gives us the vision of a germinal real ity described by a prescientific, underdeveloped mentality, which appeals to mythological fabulation to explain what is hidden or escapes by rational means" (87). Fiction, Portuondo*s "fabulation," complements historical sci ence by providing the empowering narrative knowledge necessary to grasp history and one's place in it. Yet the novel does not exclusively valorize this prescientific mentality, for it shows how the culture of Vaudou, while offer ing an alternative or corrective to the European episteme, later sanctions the despotism of Henri Christophe and all of his "heirs" to autocratic power. Another treatment that would vindicate Vaudou s role in the Haitian Revo lution presents a revealing contrast to Carpentier's. In the novel Chango cl gran putas (1983) by Colombian author Manuel Zapata Olivella, the loas and the dead play their role in guiding the Haitian leaders. They appear in the third part of Zapata Olivella's novel, "The Rebellion of the Vaudoux," in order to pass on their experience to others along what amounts to a dynastic chain of command. Under the aegis of the Vaudou gods, history can be conceived as cyclical, recursive, and progressive at the same time. The vaudoux and the dead themselves are "rebels," "rebeldes," opposed to the religious institution that sanctions slavery (Zapata Olivella, Chango 283). The cyclical motif of rebirth is the key: the life force, called kulonda in Kikongo (see chapter 5), is the spirit-word reincarnated in the succeeding generations of Zapata Olivella s black protagonists. Mackandal, immolated by the French for leading some of the first uprisings, returns in spirit to acknowledge his death, but he declares, "my ekobios [comrades, in Abakua],

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Ytrsiiis iff frill o 211 know that I, transformed into the serpent of Damballah, will be reborn tri umphant in the rainbow after every storm." Toussaint L'Ouverture, conspicu ously absent from Carpentier's Vaudou-focused account, appears as an of fended shade, resenting the defaming of his revolution as a massacre by blacks when it constituted a just war against the genocide sponsored by the planta tion owners. Yet Toussaint must previously appear before Henri Christophe and confess, remorsefully, that he attempted to reinstitute slavery on Saint Domingue. On the same island, it is Baron Samedi, Lord of the Graveyard, who handed Bouckman his bullet of gold, perhaps the same bullet that the Guede gives to Henri Christophe with which to shoot himself, an act preor dained on the Ifa Board. In his turn, Bouckman will also pass the keys of Elegba to Toussaint, who after his death will truly become his name L'Ouverture, "the Great Opening of Liberty." Against the attack of Napoleon's fleet, the deified Ancestors become the slaves' "compass," without which the defenders of the republic "would have lost the road to liberty" (Zapata Olivella, Chanqo 290, 314, 279, 320-21, 354, 326, 324). The Haitian saga of Zapata Olivella s novel comes to an open-ended con clusion when Henri Christophe, ambivalently treated in Carpentier's narra tive, justifies his coronation as absolute monarch. With this royal act, he claims, he is sending the message to Napoleon that the French emperor is dealing not with some petty colonial governor but with a peer among statesmen. Christophe's monumental statement of black defiance is "the citadel of Ogoun Ferriere" (Zapata Olivella, Chango 346; 307, my emphasis). Zapata Olivella thus presents a more sophisticated, multisided rendering of the Haitian Revolution than Carpentier's by reconstructing and including the "Black Jacobins'" perspective (i.e., that of Toussaint, Dessalines, and Petion, among other statesmen-generals studied by C. L. R. James) without overlooking the power of the mythic dimension projected by Vaudou reli gion and aesthetics. More completely than Carpentier as well, Zapata Olivella rebuilds a cosmos in which the orisha-loa archetypes can take an active and personalized role in political action. Yet in both narratives, the mythopoetics of history and the history of mythopoesis, both loaded with African-based symbols, cross and conflate. In literature and history alike, the legend of the Great Opening became poetry and reality. Yet for all its liberatory capability, Vaudou sanctions a form of mythic and fetishistic thinking caught in the spell of the (sacralized) image, a spell that overpowers perceptions of sociohistorical conditions.Thought in Carpentier's novel is shown as enchanted by the image of loas, omens, royal emblems,

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116 o Chflpter Six the monumental architecture of Sans-Souci and the Citadelle la Ferriere. Such mystification demonstrates Adorno's insight that "[w]hat clings to the image remains idolatry, mythic enthrallment" such that "[t]he totality of images blends into a wall before reality" (205). In mystifying the motives for class struggle, the Vaudou image enthralls, blocking the insight needed to orga nize resistance to the power of the mulatto elite under Jean Pierre Boyer. Thus, the anticolonial, antislavery revolution ushers in the reinstatement, in 1820, of colonial structures (see Davis 71). The novels representation of Vaudou fetishism, on the other hand, makes a valid critique of "Enlightenment culture" itself by mirroring a fetishism inherent to Enlightenment. Before "succumbing" to the temptations of tropi cal languor and Vaudou ritual, Pauline Bonaparte, married to General Leclerc, already appears enslaved to the image and therefore to magico-religious pat terns of thought associated with her Corsican upbringing. Pauline masters her slave Soliman, not only commanding him to carry out her every whim but also taunting him by allowing him to massage her body and kiss her legs: in one scene, Soliman is "kneeling on the floor, with a gesture that Bernardin of Saint-Pierre would have interpreted as a symbol of the noble gratitude of a simple soul before the generous undertakings of the Enlight enment" (REM 73). Imaged as such, Enlightenment becomes a legitimating ideology of colonialism and makes domination over into a matter of no blesse oblige for the benefit of the subjugated, the colonizer's gift to the colonized. The Enlightenment faith in reason becomes a sort of Vaudou ratio nalism. Yet this imagistic ideology will have its revenge: the European Pauline will have no choice but to surrender to the magic of Vaudou when, desperate, she seeks a cure for her husband's, Leclerc s, fatal case of yellow fever. "One morning, the chambermaids discovered, with fright, that the black man was executing a strange dance around Pauline, kneeling on the floor with loosened hair." A rooster with its throat slit and images of the saints hanging from the rafters completes the scene of the cure (REM 77-78). Idolatrous imagery will play a mean joke on Soliman later on, when, reveling in Rome during Carnival time, he suddenly discovers, inside the Borghese Palace, a statue of a nude woman holding out an applethe Venus of Canova. Drunkenly mistaking the statue for the body of his former mistress, Soliman begins to massage it in the accustomed fashion, "moved by an imperious physical remembrance" because "[a]n unbearable feeling of night mare remained in his hands" (REM 129-30).Then follows the mad scene in which Soliman, bereaved or malaria-stricken, tries to "revive" the statue and falls into a feverish dream. In that dream, "he was trying to reach a God who

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ftrsitisifYiitai o 20 was in faraway Dahomey, at some shady crossroads, with his red phallus rest ing on a crutch that he carried with him for that purpose" (REM 131). In his delirium, Soliman finds an exit from the colonial history that has twisted his desire and distanced him from the loas. In Papa Legba, patron saint of crossroads and interpreters, the former masseur seeks a messenger to the loas: he calls to the guardian of a heritage in which he identified himself On this "night of the statues," the reminder of Paulines body provokes a hysterical attack, bringing to mind the sounds of the song (one also imagines drum ming) that would invite the loa to open up the door between worlds and possess the serviteur: "Papa Legba, l'ouvri barrie-a pou moin, ago ye, / Fapa Legba, ouvri barrie-a pou moin, pou moin passe* (REM 131). The whole enigmatic scene could be construed as one showing Soliman s continued "psychical" subjugation to magical thinking in the postindependence period. The former slaves still cling to myth and image. Soliman s "madness" in Karlsbad constitutes a doomed attempt to restore a psychic wholeness. Much of the narrative of the novel's third section recounts the tyrannical reign of Henri Christophe. Christophe s ascent to the throne of the Northern Kingdom demonstrates that the renascent spirit of monarchyhis blazon is the phoenixand the recourse to violence exist in even the most rationalsounding programs. The motto on Christophe s cannon appropriately de clares itself to be Ultima Ratio Regum, or The Last Argument of the King (REM 113, 112). Even though Christophe is said to have "always kept himself at the margin of the Africanist mystique of the first caudillos of the Haitian independence," he usesVaudou signs as means of obtaining power and inter preting his experience (REM 112).The emperor allows bulls to be sacrificed so that their blood may be added to the mortar of the Citadelle la Ferriere (REM 97, 98). Just prior to the ghostly appearance of Corneille Breille and the onset of Christophe s paralysis, Christophe "suspects" that "there would be an image of him stuck with pins or hanging in a bad way with a knife shoved into its heart. Very far away, at times, arose a palpitation of drums that were probably not playing in supplication for his long life" (REM 106). I have noted the accent that the novel places on the powers of speech and verbal performance. Mackandal was said to charm, seduce, and create a mythical African world by his storytelling; Bouckman's voice invoked both the loas and the French Declaration; and Soliman s incantations, it was hoped, would save the dying Governor Leclerc from the yellow fever. In the Christophe episodes, the talking drums, which convey news and signal the start of the revolt, pattern their messages on the verbal formulas that circu late in the slave community By these means, as stated by Carullo, "The drums

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lit o (ktpttriix produce the 'nommo,' 'the magic word,' here prediction of the revolutionary movement of this Afro-American community" (8).Vaudou is above all a lan guage, or a congeries of distinct idioms that communicate worship, identity, protection, as demonstrated in Carpentier's narrative. Vaudou as language also functions as an instrument of interpretation whose potential, it could be argued, has not been exhausted by Haitian history The character of pere Labat is cited as saying, "[T]he blacks were acting like the Philistine, adoring Dogon inside the Ark" (REM 61), and indeed it is a certain kind of allegori cal interpretation, a cross-cultural "misreading," that produces this form of worship. The slaves, rude philosophers, interpret the world before changing it. Such interpretation constitutes another contribution to transculturation, as when the novel demonstrates how Spanish colonial culture would have appeared to a serviteur of the loas. Once in Santiago de Cuba in the company of his expatriate master, Ti Noel hears the contrapuntal music of Esteban Salas in a Cuban cathedral. There he finds a Baroque sensuality and spirituality agreeable to his Vaudou sensibilities: a Vaudou heat that he had never found in the Saint-Sulpician temples of the Cap. The Baroque golds, the human hairs of the Christs, the mystery of the confessionals heavily decorated with mouldings, the dragons crushed by holy feet, the swine of Saint Anthony, the broken color of San Benito, the black Virgins, the Saint Georges with the coturni and corselets of French tragic actors, the pastoral instruments played on festival nights, had an enveloping force, a power of seduction, through presences, symbols, at tributes and signs, similar to that given off by the altars of the houmfort consecrated to Damballah, the Serpent God. In addition, Saint James [Santiago] is Ogoun Fai, the field marshal of storms, at whose entreaty [or incantationconjuro] the men of Bouckman had risen up. (REM 67) Ti Noel's reading of the Baroque music, architecture, and iconographyand our reading of (the narrator's reading of) his readingmakes the church over into a Vaudou temple, a houmfort on a grand scale. The attendance at mass is doubled by the presence of loas masked by Catholic images. Mystery, theatricality, iconography, hagiography, and embellishment, all touchstones of the Baroque style, are made forVaudou, just as the ritual and symbols of Cuban Catholicism were reinterpreted by slaves in an Afro-Cuban context (SAS 114). ForTi Noel, a way of seeing is a way of thinking. In the light of this cross-cultural reading, I do not fully agree with Carullo's estimation that "Carpentier demonstrates that Vaudou presides over the life of this people of

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VersioRS if VdHdoo Iff America; that its people, king, governors and governed, oppressors and op pressed, find themselves subject to its supernatural and divine laws, the only means of liberation" (9). Carpentier's text does demonstrate the manner in which the European powers and European versions of truth and history are overthrown by the forces of Haitian Vaudou. Vaudou does preserve a cultural tradition and foster the rise of a rebellious subject. Yet Vaudou reaches its interpretive limits when it attempts to read the text of history. The arms of liberation impose their own form of blindness, subjecting the Haitians to a new harvest of poverty, illiteracy, isolation, and dictatorship. Returning to his old plantation in the Plaine du Nord after his exile in Santiago de Cuba.Ti Noel walks through a sterilized, hostile countryside, reading "signs": goats hang from spiny trees; Legba's crutches lie amidst the "gnarled" roots of a tree. Ti Noel is glad to be back in "the land of the Great Pacts": "For he knewand all the French blacks from Santiago de Cuba knewthat the tri umph of Dessalines was indebted to a tremendous preparation, in which had intervened Loco, Petro, Ogoun Feraille, Brise-Pimba, Marinette Bois-cheche and all the divinities of powder and fire" (REM 85). But from the broader historical perspective, this wasteland indicates more: the consequences of Christophe's tyranny, the refusal to work, the coup of the republican mulattoes. These readings tragically contradict the Utopian image painted by Vaudou ideology. What Ti Noel cannot comprehend, nor has the means to comprehend, is that the mulattoes distinguished them selves from the blacks by fighting for equality with the whites. In the midst of the conflict, some 10 percent of the land and some fifty thousand slaves were the property of the mulatto class in 1789 (Hurston, 94). Once they ascended to power, the mulattoes put down and exploited the black insurrectionaries, who had made it possible for them, the mulattoes, to re place the white aristocracy in power. Ti Noel recognizes both the horsemen of the mulattoes' troops and the surveyors sent to reparcel the land, but he lacks the kind of narrative knowledge that would make sense of these devel opments. Vaudou, as I have argued, was a means of both empowerment and mysti fication in the Haitian Revolution. This double path crosses itself in the con cluding chapter of El rcino, "Agnus Dei," where the narrative makes an appro priately open-ended statement on the laws of Vaudou. A dispossessed Ti Noel in that chapter has transformed himself into a gander in an attempt to join a goose clan.The geese reject him. He feels a "cosmic weariness" at this, yet another in a series of disempowering exclusions in a lifetime of nega-

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Ill o (inter Su tions.Then comes the epiphany: Ti Noel realizes, according to the narrator, that one must suffer and work to improve things, for "the greatness of man is precisely in wanting to be better than what he is" (REM 144). As an apoca lyptic storm brews up, Ti Noel disappears, or else he has metamorphosed himself into the "wet vulture," whose extended wings form a cross before he plunges in flight into the Bois Caiman (REM 145). The saga of Bois Caiman, whose name gives us the last words of the narrative proper, has for a colophon the symbol of death or transcendence, the buzzard or vulture known as aura tihosa, or, in Lucumi, Kandkand, a sacred scavenger who, like the Lamb of God, mediates between heaven and earth in bringing the message of humans to the Almighty (APA 35, 195-96). Vaudou symbolism has triumphed in Carpentier's novel, not in history but as slave ideology, religious mystification or artistic, marvelously real fetish. As in jEcue-Yamba-O!, Carpentier projects in El reino a world in which neoAfrican religion is but one conspicuous piece in the transcultural mosaic alongside other texts of tradition and culture. Apart from the historical fail ure of Vaudou, the manner in which cultural practices from diverse origins converge and transform one another in ways subversive of the dominant Eurocentric discourses; perhaps he agreed with Lezama Lima's apparent parody of Ti Noel's moment of anagnorisis when the narrator of Paradiso de clares: "[T]he greatness of man consists in being able to assimilate what is unknown to him" (265).The apparently "centerless" quality of El rcino, com posed of a series of vignettes loosely and inconsistently bound by Ti Noel's assimilative viewpoint, allows the text to foreground the continuing signifi cance that Vaudou has for Caribbean culture while emphasizing its limita tions when confronted with other forces and discourses. Vaudou, thus rede fined and reframed in Carpentier's text, is recodified and restored to its ambiguous, subjectivist, and subversive drift. Betweei Heaveo asd Earth The stories of Antonio Benitez Rojo's El escudo dc hojas secas (1969) depict prerevolutionary Cuba as a country in need of regeneration. The book's title translates as "The Coat-of-Arms of Dry Leaves," alluding to a Spanish es cutcheon that the bourgeois family of the title story purchases for itself. AfroCuban religious practices, especially divination and the family's devotion to San lizaro, the Chankpana or Babalu-Aye of Dahomeyan tradition, gives the main characters the luck they need to win the national lottery. With these developments, the story satirizes the search for the symbols of prestige and

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fersioisifluiu o 121 power on the part of a Cuban middle class whose position in Cuban society before the Revolution was always tenuous, based not on dominance in in dustrial or agricultural wealth so much as on the vagaries of a market domi nated by foreign capital. The title story also targets the nouveau-riche's su perficial spiritualism through abundant references to palm readers, card readers, fortune tellers, mediums, santeros, and astrologers, and thus alludes to a generalized crisis of orthodox religion in modern society Nouveau-riche occultism here signifies a commodified transcendentalism, but it also remits to a world of ritual and mystic significations only vaguely sensed by the story's acquisitive protagonists. Benitez Rojo's story "La tierra y el cielo" (Earth and heaven), from the same collection, on the other hand, brings Afro-Cuban religion, and specifi cally Vaudou or Arara, into the narrative of liberation and on the side of radi cal change. The story can be placed in Taylor's category of the liberating nar rative, for it critiques a dominant ideology and addresses real issues in Cuban history Yet the juxtaposition of historical and mythical visions in the story works to reveal a bicultural, polysemic construction of experience that ad mits the two worldviews in a complementary fashion. Julio Miranda con firms that Benitez Rojo's stories in the anthology belong to the category of Carpentier's lo real maravilloso, "generally orienting him in the same sense of a critical grasp of history and with a similar Baroque brilliance, only now of ten directed toward the present: residues of a magical mentality in the Revo lutionla tierra y el cielo . etc." (102). These "residues" in the story convey mythological and doctrinal content from Arara tradition. Possession and divination play a significant role in the narrated experience of its central characters, serving as metaphors of identity and of ideological and group allegiance throughout. Yet despite the story's explicit relegation of Afro-Cuban beliefs and practices to a prehistory of the Cuban Revolution, we may question the apparent closure of the story's plot if we take, as readers, the more ambivalent viewpoint suggested by the story's text. Concretely, "La tierra y el cielo" immerses the reader in the world of the loas as experienced in the lives of Haitian characters transplanted in Camagiiey province. Pedro Limon, Pascasio, and Ariston are three impoverished Haitian workers who, threatened with deportation by Batista's government, see no alternative but to join the anti-Batista resistance in the Sierra Maestra.Through the teachings and guidance of an old Haitian houngan named Tigua, the young men believe that the loas will protect them in battle. Tigua's grandson

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Ill o (iipterSx Ariston in particular puts his faith in "Oggun Ferrai": "That nightTigua as sured that Oggun Ferrai had mounted Ariston, that he had conversed with the god and the latter is very happy to have been able to move about and fight inside the muscles of his grandson" (Benitez Rojo, "tierra," 13). The story follows the divinely inspired Ariston and his companeros through their participation in the fighting and explores the consequences of their loa wor ship as well. Throughout the narrative, Oggun, as Ariston s divine double, plays a key role as a narrative functor in the story and merits here a brief "background check." A literary precedent for this use of Oggun can be found in Carpentier s El reino dc este mundo, to which we momentarily return. In that novel, Oggun in some aspect or other appears and reappears in the context of the Haitian Revolution. When the fighting becomes especially brutal under the govern ment of Rochambeau, the gods of both sides become involved. "Now, the Great Loas smiled upon the Negroes' arms. Victory went to those who had warrior gods to invoke. Ogoun Badagri guided the cold steel charges against the last redoubts of the Goddess Reason" (Carpentier, Kingdom 103).The pas sage brings to mind an earlier intervention into the struggle by Oggiin Ferrai, who with other loas becomes intertwined with the living legend of the houngan Mackandal: "One day he would give the signal of the great upris ing" (REM 33). Later on in the ceremony of the famous pact of the Bois Caiman, during which the Bouckman calls on the Saint Domingue blacks to rise up, a Rada priestess is said to invoke the presence of Ogoun Badagri, addressed as "General sanglant" (bloody general) (REM 53). The Ogoun Badagri of Carpentier s novel is the owner of the secret of iron and the warrior god who leads the charges of the rebelling slaves. Carpentier and Benitez Rojo refer to Ogoun Feraille, again patron of warriors and of blacksmiths. Other Afro-Haitian manifestations include the red-eyed Ogoun Jerouge; Ogoun Laflambeaum, a god of fire; and Ogoun Panama, a guardian against sunstroke. This last one wears a panama hat (DALC 358-59). Ogoun is also the path breaker, he who cut through the primordial thicket to clear a way for orishas and humans on earth. He symbolizes justice, as evidenced in the Nigerian courtrooms where Yoruba witnesses will swear upon Ogoun in the form of a piece of iron (SR 47-48). Thompson remarks that the Papa Ogoun of Vaudou often appears as a hot, truculent god of the Petro side, the one known in Dahomey as Gu: "the personification of iron's cutting edge" and the gubasa blade, who is further syncretized in the Caribbean with the militant saints of Catholicism (FS 167,

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ImioasoflHdu o ]]) 169, 172). Fables and pataki in the Regla de Ocha canon emphasize Oggiin's violent rivalry with Chango, but inVaudou these two are syncretized, fused together, in the figure of Papa Ogoun, sometimes seen, as mentioned before, in the form of Ogoun Chango (SMD 34-35; REM 53). Let us return to Benitez Rojo's story. Its story begins near the end of its plot: the Revolution has triumphed, and Pedro Limon is returning to Camaguey, after a long absence, to work as a teacher. On the way back home, Pedro has stopped by the ingenio or sugar mill to greet Pascasio. From the free, indirect discourse relating the scene of their reunion, the reader learns that Limon has spent time in the hospital for reconstructive surgery after a mortar explosion destroyed his face and that he belonged to the group of Afro-Haitians and speaks their Creole. We also learn that someone named Tigua continues to converse with the loas and to criticize Fidel for appropri ating the farmlands in the Agrarian Reform, that something significant con cerning Pascasio s brother remains unsaid between them, and that Leonie, once beloved by Pedro, has been living with Pascasio for six years and they now have a son (TC 5-6). This overview serves to frame the rest of the story, which concerns events leading up to Pedro's return. Next we learn that Pedro, separated from his parents in Cuba during a forced repatriation of Haitian immigrants, was raised like a brother to Pascasio and Ariston by their mother. In the present tense, Pedro narrates the memory of nights when he lay awake in bed listening to the prayers of Tigua, the grandfather of his adoptive brothers. Tigua s Afro-Haitian religion, as Tigua re-creates it, is beautiful and comforting. Pedro tells of his happiness in Guanamaca when, seated next to his sweetheart Leonie, they would listen to Tigua s fireside stories: "Through the crack in the board I hear Tigua speak ing with the gods and the dead. Tigua is a powerful houngan who even knows Cuban brujeria. He also transforms into a snake and eats the chickens of the tenant farmers. I respect him a lot. Tigua loves Ariston more than all of his grandsons. He says that he will make an houngan out of him, that he is going to teach him leave his skin and become an owl, or a boa." The loving grandfather, reminiscent of Mackandal in his shape-changing and storytelling, does teach Ariston, and well. Thanks to an herbal mixture prepared by Tigua to strengthen his grandson's arm, Ariston can cut more cane than anyone else ("the machete is like a thunderbolt in his hand"), and he can defeat a fellow cane cutter in a machete fight, slashing open the opponent's abdomen. Ariston welcomes the training in religion and his possession by Oggun with a declaration that resembles the Vaudou praise-songs: "I will be an

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114 o Chapter fix houngan greater thanTigua. Oggun Ferrai protects me, Oggun the marshal, Oggun the peasant, Oggun of iron, Oggun of war. I am Oggiin!" So empow ered by the belligerent god of the forge, Ariston forces Pedro to accompany him to the Sierra Maestra to fight Batista as Ariston's resguardo, his talisman, or else die at Ariston's hand. Pedro, "choosing" to fight alongside Ariston, real izes that "we were going to war because Oggiin had ordered it, to fight against the tanks and cannons of Batista." As it did for the slaves in Carpentier's novel, a belief in the loas produces confidence and courage in the anti-Batista guerrillas, for the rite of possession is actually said to bring down the "will" of Oggiin into Ariston's body. This son of Oggiin even defies an airplane of Batista"he was even going to cut off its wings." When the airplane drops a bomb near the Haitian fighters that does not explode, the apparent miracle convinces Pedro that Oggiin is indeed protecting them, and it convinces the Oriente rebel band to accept the two Haitians into their troop (TC 11-12, 14, 17, 18). From his viewpoint in the postwar present, Pedro also recalls how Oggiin would take complete possession of Ariston, without Ariston's awareness of it, right before entering combat. As Oggiin Ferrai, Ariston thinks and fights and strides as the orisha does, with audacity enough to kill an enemy soldier with his machete once his ammunition has run out. But possession means a loss of both self and self-control. Ariston's rash action forces the Haitians to retreat, which provokes a spate of racially tinged criticisms from a rebel sol dier from the plains. Instantly, Ariston raises the machete and cracks the soldier's skull open with one blow. We see in the ensuing confrontation be tween Ariston and his materialist comrades a clash of rival codes. Yet judg ment belongs to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Ariston is sentenced to execution. But he doesn't care, confident that, with Pedro present as his resguardo, nothing can harm him. Pedro must, nonetheless, form a part of the firing squad that executes him. Ariston is stood before a sacred ceiba tree, and his colored handkerchiefs do not avail him, nor his seed necklaces nor the proxmity of Pedro (TC 19, 21, 22). After the officer from Havana gives Ariston the coup de grace, Pedro be lieves he sees something like a snake, sliding away from Ariston's body under the cover of smoke. A question arises in Pedro's mind: has Ariston taken the animal's form and escaped? Whatever the case, the officer from Havana does not include that bit of interpretation into his record. But as he writes, he tells Pedro to go "decide" because, Pedro reflects, "in life men always had had to choose between the earth and heaven, and for me the time had come" (TC 24).

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Versions o) Viadoi o US So ends the story, explaining therewith the reasons that Pedro has chosen "the earth," renouncing the path of the loas and taking up the path of the Revolution as one of its rural teachers. The story is "liberatory" on this level. Yet the denouement does not completely ensure the narrative's closure: does Pedro's decision, we wonder, amount to renouncing Vaudou's vision of sal vation? For Cuervo Hewitt, the answer to the question is no, for the moment of Ariston's execution becomes a "mythical vision": "It is the instant of a crossing of perspectives, and at the same time, a reality with neither center nor borders, fragmented and moving." And as this example demonstrates, "the African presence in the work of Benitez Rojo leaves reality suspended on the threshold of a profound crack that opens up within the objective. The fragmentation [of two cosmovisions] is an illusion as much as is [their] unity" (APA, 221, 223). Juxtaposing such "simultaneous readings," Benitez Rojo's text seems to argue against attributing epistemological priority to one or the other cosmovision, for his narrative also declares that the same "spirit" that fired the Haitian Revolution reemerged in the Cuban Revolution. Yet the text takes a relativist stance in acknowledging that the Vaudou cosmovision that proved empowering in the Haitian Revolution would lose legitimacy in another context, under the eyes of the official culture of the Cuban Revolu tion. The crossed perspectives of this last scenario of transformation indicate the adjacency of incommensurable discourses that come into conflict, espe cially in moments of crisis. Mythic narrative and liberating narrative con verge in certain revolutionary struggles but diverge and oppose one another in other battles. Ariston's possession signals the manner in which Vaudou eschews scriptural, historicocritical forms of signification, relying instead on the "physical remembrance"inscription on the bodythat Mackandal and Tigua speak, that Soliman and Ariston act out, that the serviteurs in general dance. Unlike the orishas in Cuba, the loas' historicity distinguishes them as functors in the grand and incomplete narrative of Haitian independence, a narrative implicitly continued on into other anticolonial, antiimperialist struggles. Carpentier and Benitez Rojo offer versions of Vaudou in narratives that scrutinize both its liberating myths and its mythical liberations. Neither makes a final verdict on Vaudou, as if to confirm that Mawu's writing is not just the script of life but life itself as an interplay of truth and fiction: an unfin ished story.

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I Religii tnd ItewlutiM Candela alum bra y mamba apagd (Fire illuminates and water extinguishes). Lydia Cabrera, Refrones de negros viejos When Enrique, protagonist of Carpentier s La Consagracion de la Primavera (The rite of spring, 1978), returns home to a postrevolutionary Havana after a long absence, he is greeted by Camila, a black maid who is wearing all-white clothing in the fashion of the devotees of theVirgen de las Mercedes (Obatala). Enrique asks her why, and Camila answers: "The Revolution has not prohib ited anyone from believing in whatever they feel Uke, and less now that all of us, blacks and whites, are equal" (Carpentier, Consagracion 527). Her state ment reveals the degree of acceptance that Afro-Cuban religion had won by about the mid-1970s: officially tolerated and even recognized as an ingredi ent of what could be called a national culture. Yet Camila's statement also conceals the story of how, before this point, the revolutionary regime had waged a war of repression, silence, harassment, and attrition against AfroCuban religion and its practitioners. It was only after an initial period of governmental intolerance toward the religion that agencies of the official culture attempted a new strategy, that of managing and containing the vari eties of Afro-Cuban religious expression by a variety of means. The changing attitudes and policies toward Afro-Cuban religion in post-1959 Cuba can be traced through the cultural history and literary narratives of the period. In this chapter I will examine that history and these narratives, considering the specific paths of affirmation and resistance that an Afro-Cuban religious cul ture has taken in its confrontations with the reasons of state. Throughout the preceding discussions of literary backgrounds and treat ments of Afro-Cuban religionsRegla de Ocha, la Sociedad Secreta Abakua, Palo Monte, and Regla Ararait has been the idea of "fiction," conceived as a sign system productive of its own reality, that has served to foreground the

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Mifjtifrikmlititi o 111 means by which Afro-Cuban narrative reconstructs the signifying dimen sions of Afro-Cuban religion. By recodifying that religion's myths, institu tional forms, ritual, doctrine, and patterns of experience as text, narrative has made it accessible to analysis and critique, revealing in the process the possible element of fictionality inherent in the religion's own systems. When that text comes into dialogue with the discourse of power authorized by the Cuban Revolution, Afro-Cuban religion takes on new sociohistorical signifi cations, as I will illustrate in this last chapter. Postrevolutionary Cuban literature has described, narrated and cited Afro-Cuban religion in a variety of ways, such that, at different moments after 1959, it has symbolized an ethnic difference within the culture of the na tion-state, a legacy of past resistance against colonial domination, or an en livening contribution to an integrated national culture. In the first decade and a half of the Revolution, however, the official culture chose to see in that religion's subculture an alternate or competing economic activity that ne gated the centralized planned economy of the state. Afro-Cuban religious practice was therefore actively discouraged. Intolerance ceded to a tolerance toward the end of the 1970s, when the cultural ministries decided that if they couldn't beat Afro-Cuban religion, they could at least in a sense invite it to join them. Under these circumstances, Afro-Cuban religion became a governmentally approved "folklore." Yet the promotion of folklore as the alter native to outright prohibition entailed subtle and not-so-subtle forms of negation since "folklorization" not only consisted of a process of simplifying and secularizing religious expression but also subjected Afro-Cuban religious values to a materialist critique. This strategy of containmentfor that is what it amounted toresulted in the assessment of Afro-Cuban religion as an ir rational, barbaric, and mystifying, although admittedly beautiful and color ful, body of antisocialist tendencies. Those tendencies, in the official view, had to be mastered by new historical forces of the Revolution, whose collec tive voice would drown out the small voices of myth and folklore. Regla de Ocha, la Sociedad Abakua, Palo Monte, and Regla Arara were thus stigma tized as subcultures belonging to a legacy of ignorance and to memories of underdevelopment. A brief overview of the Revolution's literary-cultural poli tics with relation to African-based religions will serve to contextualize my subsequent discussion of Afro-Cuban narratives after the Revolution. In his African Civilizations in the New World (1971), Roger Bastide refers to the forms of syncretic religion that have been "violently attacked" in Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil, by both capitalist and communists alike: "It is charged with being a non-productive form of economy, an obstacle to the country's progressive

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SI o (liptcrSerai development in that it maintains pockets of restricted circulation currency, which thus cannot be capitalised or ploughed back into industry" (123). Simpson also writes in 1978 that the practice of Santeria, like that of all other religions in Cuba, was discouraged under Castro's regime (94). Reports con cerning Afro-Cuban religion's situation in recent Cuban history lend support to these charges. Cabrera has referred to repressions of African cults in Cuba and in particular to incidents in the airports in which officers have confis cated eleke necklaces from those about to embark on so-called freedom flights. Government officers have even confiscated the kofd bracelets of green and yellow beads, worn by the babalao, that bring protection from Oriimila (YO 126).The attitude expressed in such prohibitions stands in curious con trast to the various attitudes that prevailed in the literature and culture of capitalist Cuba. Prior to 1959, Afro-Cuban religion, as I have argued in previous chapters, often provided literature with an alternative viewpoint from which to reveal and criticize the contradictions of a Cuban society under U.S. hegemony and dependent dictatorship. Whereas Carpentier in jEcue-Yamba-O! attempted to reconstruct Abakua religion from a putative "inside" viewpoint, he also elabo rated the ideological implications of its belief and practice from a sociohistorical perspective. Ramos reconstructed the religious worldview of a run away slave in colonial Cuba in order to critique the failings of a republican Cuba. Del Valle in his Nafiigo stories attempted to unmask the erotic and political desire within what he perceived to be a world of Afro-Cuban reli gious illusion. Whereas these writers included Afro-Cuban discourse in the narratives of social critique, Lachatanere, Cabrera, and, for the most part, Ortiz published many texts affirming the complexity, dignity, beauty, and integrity of Afro-Cuban religious cultures, whose values, they believed, could contribute to the making of an authentically national culture. As this study's earlier chapters have shown, Afro-Cuban literature sometimes occupied itself with re-creating the entire "other world" of orishas, mpungus, vaudoux, and saints, sometimes examining the architectonics of their systems, some times analyzing the mechanisms of their religious practices. In the prevailing bourgeois opinion prior to 1959, however, that religion and its associated culture, despite their literary treatments, represented a stage of barbarity that the "modern" republic would soon outgrow. Yet, strangely, Afro-Cuban religion and Cuban politics in the twentieth century have often occupied the same bed. We have examined the links be tween Havana politicians and Nafiigo confraternities and recalled anecdotes concerning Castro and his supposed links to Santeria. By some accounts,

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Religion aid Rtvolitioi o 22) Machado was an Omo-Chango who wore a red kerchief around his waist to ensure protection from his orisha (SR 69). Lachatafiere tells the story of how Machado in 1928 inaugurated a park during the Sixth Panamerican Confer ence in Havana. In the center of that park he had ordered the planting of a sacred ceiba tree in a plot in which had been placed soil from the twenty-one republics in attendance. Two palm treesthe favorite refuge of Chango had been planted there too. The presence of these two trees sent out the message that Machado s orisha had told him to hold the ceremony. It was not uncommon thereafter to find offerings placed between the roots of the ceiba and at the foot of the palm trees. Some thirty years later, Batista was consid ered a "son of Orumila," and his rise to power was credited to this devotion, which he expressed in the revolution against Machado, on September 4, 1933, by choosing a banner for the army that bore the green of Orumila and the yellow of Ochun (MS 37-39). Fulgencio Batista, it is also said, made contact with many Afro-Cuban priests and diviners. Before he abandoned the Cuban capital in December of 1958, a Jamaican obeahman and a Haitian houngan predicted that the end was near for the dictator. In a last-ditch attempt to hold on to power in Sep tember 1958, Batista had assembled hundreds of Afro-Cuban religious lead ers together. Their mission: "to summon the gods of Africa to his aid and 'to appease the demons of war'" (CBA 12). After 1959, when culture and intellectual production had to be harnessed in service to the agendas of the socialist state, Afro-Cuban religion would provide its followers with a refuge from the pressures of the economy and an alternative to the culture of politics. Yet the state had its own ideas about that alternative. In Castro, the Blacks, and Africa (1988), Carlos Moore, referring to Afro-Cu ban religion as "the repository of Cuba's most powerful cultural distinctiveness," has criticized the socialist government's repressive treatment of their practices (98). Moore's sociohistorical analysis illustrates that repression by referring to the reception of Walterio Carbonell's Critica: Como surgio la cultura nacional (Critique: How the national culture arose, 1961), a book that, as we have seen in earlier chapters, defended the preservation and promotion of Afro-Cuban culture, arguing that it has expressed the core of nationalist and anticolonialist sentiments throughout Cuba's history. Religion for a people such as the Afro-Cubans was not, in Carbonell's view, the "opiate" of Marx and Engels's manifesto but an "instrument for investigating natural and social phenomena," one offering supernatural explanations that, although "vitiated at their origins," provided a "social sense" of said phenomena.

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m o (Inter Smi Carbonell's book had been published for three months when it was with drawn and banned and Carbonell relieved of duty in the foreign ministry (CBA99, 109). Jorge I. Dominguez has called Castro's policy toward Afro-Cuban culture a "negrophobic" one, charging that it has suppressed political movements emphasizing the issues concerning blacks. In addition, "[i]t has sought to extirpate Afro-Cuban religions, by fighting them directly or by seeking to transform them into artistic folklore." With repression or neutralization went the tendency in post-Batista Cuba to exclude blacks from positions of au thority, to silence discussions on racism, and to acknowledge only the pro cess of assimilation. It appears that Castro instituted a battery of measures to discourage the practice of Afro-Cuban religion in the early 1960s. The re gime restricted public drumming, central to Afro-Cuban rites and fiestas, by requiring prior authorization from the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. Castro, writes Moore, even considered banning carnivals and starting up bullfights as an alternative to the street celebrations. Members of Afro-Cuban fraternities were barred from membership in the Communist Party. Foreign visitors were discouraged from attending Santeria ceremonies (CBAxi, 100, 131). Exclusions, arrests, and other forms of prohibition discouraged participa tion in the Afro-Cuban brotherhoods during the first decade of the regime's power. The response, writes Moore, relying on interviews with informants including dissidents Gilberto Aldama and Esteban Cardenas, was a series of Abakua-organized counterattacks in 1969. They occurred "in reprisal, it seems, for the uncovering of an all-black underground movement called the Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional (MLN). Although there was no conclu sive evidence that the Abakua as such was involved, the indiscriminate arrests of known Nanigos were carried out. As the repression continued into 1970, the Abakua brotherhood took an action that frightened the government even more. For the first time since Fidel Castro came to power, a successful twentyfour-hour strike was carried out, paralyzing the entire port of Havana" (CBA 306). The "bulldozer" approach of the 1960s thus backfired, producing "the opposite of desired results: Afro-Cuban religions had gone deeper under ground and grown in size." This forced clandestinity and involution pro voked a more subtle, diffuse campaign of subversion directed against AfroCuban community groups and especially against the secretive Abakua potencias. Moore cites the final declaration of the 1971 National Congress on Education and Culture, which associated "mental backwardness" and

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Mifioitrikvilitiii 2)1 "school retardation" with "[t]he incidence of problems arising from some religious sects, especially some of African origin (Nanigo and Abakua)." The National Congress also raised the concept of socialist revolution to the status of "highest expression of Cuban culture" with the concomitant degradation of Abakua brotherhoods to expressions of "criminality" and "juvenile delin quency." In 1971 as well, a campaign was launched to infiltrate, expose, and thus undermine Abakua brotherhoods (CBA 304, 102). The government's attitude of intolerance and suspicion was soon to relax in response to internal and external developments. The 1970s were to be Cuba's "Africa Decade," during which the interventions in Angola and Ethio pia exposed Cubans to the cultural practices of their anti-imperialist com rades in arms. Contact with African soldiers had occurred even earlier, pre paring Cubans to embrace a more tolerant attitude at a later time. For Simba fighters in the Congo under the leadership of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, it would be "unthinkable ... to go into battle without special anti-bullet charms and amulets (gris-gris); or without seeking the advice of elderly wise men." Guevara viewed such practices as primitive and atavistic, contradictory to the "scientific communism" he sought to propagate in Africa. He viewed with disgust the Simbas' practice of taking away organs from the bodies of the fallen mercenaries for the making of amulets, and he even suspected Congo lese guerillas of cannibalism (CBA 368). Despite such anti-African ideas emerging from Cuba's involvement in Af rican independence movements, other developments seemed to invite the orishas back into the public purview. The Black Power movement in the United States had affirmed African-based religion as a part of its identity politics since the 1960s, and the economic setbacks of the Revolution moved many to turn to the same religion as a refuge and an escape valve. The U.S. continued to impose its embargo, the CIA sponsored terrorist acts, the 1970 sugar harvest failed to meet the ten-million-ton goal set by the regime, and tropical storms wreaked havoc.The boat lift from Mariel, with the exodus by September 1980 of some 125,000 Cubans, sent out a clear message of dis content. In this climate of scarcity and instability, the regime had to lift most overt repressions of Afro-Cuban religion by the early 1980s, when it was permitting private "farmers' markets" to operate and inviting some foreign corporations to invest on the island. And Afro-Cuban religion seemed a good selling point for the tourist industry (CBA 340). The state's policy toward Afro-Cuban cults definitely took a more sophis ticated accommodationist approach later on in the 1980s with the appoint ment of Afro-Cuban specialist Jose Carneado Rodriguez to survey religious

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19 o Chipter SCTCI activity on the island. Carneado is reported to have attended initiation ceremonies and organized meetings between officials of the regime and Cu ban babalaos. The great coup of Carneado*s administration of religions was to arrange the visit to Cuba, in June 1987, of the Oni of Ife, his Majesty Alaiyeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuwade Olubuse II, supreme spiritual leader of the Nigerian Yoruba. During his visit, the Oni met with top-ranking officials of the Politburo, including Armando Hart Davalos. After the meeting be tween Castro and the Oni, it was decided that the Fourth International Con gress on Orisha Tradition and Culture would be held the following year in Cuba (and not in Haiti, as originally planned) and that Cuba would install a "Jose Marti Cultural Center" right in Ife. The government also received com mendations, reported in GranmaWeekly Review (June 29, 1987), from the Oni and his cultural adviser for its progress in eliminating racial discrimination (CBA343). Despite the disincentives to doing so, some 85 percent of the Cuban popu lation practices one or another Afro-Cuban religion, according to Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, the secretary general of Cuba's Catholic episco pate interviewed by Moore in 1985. African-inspired religions could no longer be ignored, and their popularity and rootedness, Moore asserts, ac count for Castro's gestures of rapprochement with the Catholic Church in 1985 and 1986 as part of an attempt at "counterbalancing the Afro-Cuban religions" (CBA 344). To counterbalance Moore's virulent attacks against Castro's Afro-Cuban policies somewhat (for we will not engage in a full-blown debate in these pages; see Perez-Sarduy's "Open Letter" for a rebuttal to Moore), one could argue that culturewhether religious, artistic, or literaryhas a special func tion in an embattled third world nation-state that must organize its citizenry to do what is necessary to survive. Cultural production is not carried out in a sociohistorical vacuum. In Cuba, the writer is not only an intellectual but also, like it or not, an ideologue, one helping to create a feeling of commit ment and solidarity among the Cubans. In the exiguity of resources and coun tenancing the threat of invasio I and terrorism, the Cuban leadership has not often permitted the kind of market-dominated "freedom of expression" en joyed by intellectuals and artists in the more developed capitalist countries. Some have called this limitation "censorship." It means that Cuban writers concerned with getting published and making a living have had to deal with official constraints on discourse, including the occasions when they would address the question of Afro-Cuban religion.

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RdiliNiiiltdilitiii o B The Afrt-Cuban Difference When justifying the government's reason for prohibiting the screening of the movie P.M., whose screenplay was written by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Fidel Castro, in a speech that would be published as Palabras a los intelectuales (Words to the intellectuals, 1961), stressed that some intellectual or artistic manifestations indeed "have an importance with regard to .. the ideologi cal formation of the people, superior to other types of artistic manifestations." In fulfilling its responsibility to "direct the people," the government claims the right to promote, regulate, and fund those works that it finds most contributory to the common welfare. What is at stake here is the ques tion of legitimacy: at bottom, the revolutionary government has the right to decide who gets published and who doesn't, and no one has the right to dispute or question that right, for "it has not given reason to put in doubt its spirit of justice and equity" (Castro 17, 18). Before he wrote the screenplay for P.M., Cabrera Infante had fulfilled his responsibility to direct the people by writing a story that depicted an AfroCuban scene while defending the right of the Revolution. The story appears among those written through the 1950s and collectively published under the title Asi en la paz como en la guerra (In peace as in war, 1960). A kaleidoscopic vision of prerevolutionary Havana and its terrors unfolds in these pages, in which two different kinds of narrative alternate in the order of presentation. Vignettes of about a page in length depict the unromanticized violence of the era: oppressive poverty, machine gunnings, torture.These vignettes come before and after the longer stories of protagonists who, in their struggle to get by in an environment of urban decay and dispossession, remain indiffer ent to, although undeniably connected with, the violence of the vignettes. In the introduction to Asi en \a paz, Cabrera Infante signals the themes of the story"En el gran ecbo" (In the great ecbo)that concerns us here: "the loss of virginity, adultery, racial discrimination" as well as the mindset of the Cuban bourgeoisie, in whose members the contradictions of society "appear most obvious" (AP 10). The hedonistic, carpe diem atmosphere of nightclubs, television, and tourism seems to distance Cabrera Infante's bourgeois characters from the political violence depicted in the vignettes. The intratextual relations implicit in such juxtapositions help to situate "En el gran ecbo," whose title refers to the Afro-Cuban ceremony witnessed by a young couple involved in an adulterous relationship. The story's inclu sion of Afro-Cuban elements demonstrates a certain acceptance of difference and incommensurability within the space of Cuban culture, with a clear decentering of European or colonial cultural values.

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1)4 o (lipttrSmi Cuervo Hewitt and Luis have noted that "Ebo, ecbo, egbo or, pronounced in Cuba even with theYoruba sound, ebbo, is a rite of purification in which offerings are made to the saints or orishas. It is commonly known as a cleans ing [limpieza]" (16n. 2). Cuervo Hewitt has also noted that the story's de piction of the purification ceremony constitutes an exception to the trend among modern Cuban narratives to ironize, demystify, or even secularize Afro-Cuban religious expression (APA 278). The adulterous couple of the story rides in the man s MG to a stadium, where, in one of its buildings, the gran ecbo is taking place. As they enter, the woman feels that "she ha[s] penetrated a magical world."The narrative evokes this magic by various means. First, typographically: the part of the story de voted to the ceremony is indented some five spaces for five and a half pages. The diegesis of the ceremony itself lacks capital letters and normal punctua tion, creating a run-on, stream-of-consciousness effect. Second, the man and woman see "one hundred or two hundred blacks dressed in white from head to feet." They are orisha worshippers, probably devotees of Obatala, and, chanting Congo verses in call-and-response format to the beating of drums, they dance in a circle, invoking Olofi, praying to the dead, and calling down the saint (AP 127-32). Although the entire ritual is seen from the perspective of two white Cu bans who are slumming about in Old Havana, some mysterious power issues from the ritual to touch and change their lives. First, the man explains that the ceremony is preparing a mulatto to receive the saint. The woman asks, "And can I receive it too?" The narrative cites the chanting, which includes the following phrases: "tendundu kipungule"; "nani masongo silanbasa"; "olofi maddie maddic olofi bica dioko bica ndiambe olofi olofi." In that chant, we hear the invocation of the supreme god Olofi (Olorun, Olodumare); the call to the kipungule (kimpungulu) or Congo spirits; and the exorcism of ndiambe or ndiambe and dioko (ndoki?), the evil spirits. The uncomprehending couple stays to watch and listen, enchanted. For the man, the language of the invocations is "damn theater slang," and the ceremony itself, "something barbarous and remote and alien like Africa." The woman on the other hand feels that something truly spiritual is taking place: "They don't seem ignorant to me. Primitive, yes, but not ignorant. They believe. They believe in something that neither you nor I can believe and they let themselves be guided by it and they live by its rules and die for it and afterwards they sing to their dead in accordance with its songs. I think it's marvelous" (AP 128, 130, 131). The strangeness of the ritual and the opacity of its language, with the suggestions implanted by the man's "interpretation," work themselves into a

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Religion irf Rettlition o 2)1 scenario of transformation that disrupts the course of the woman's life. She reveals this change after an ancient black woman, dressed in the white of Obatala's purity, has approached her to say, "Daughter, stop living in sin. That is all." The words have an oracular effect. The woman leaves the great ecbo; she cries; she hands the man the photograph of his wife and son (AP 133, 134-35). For Cuervo Hewitt, the young woman's change of heart signals the pres ence of Obatala as a cultural fact: "with the epiphany of a new personal alter native, the young woman in Cabrera Infante's story saw a road open up, purified, that adultery had covered over beforehand" (APA 126). Although she does not chant and dance in the ritual, and although she has been nei ther versed in the doctrine nor initiated into the order, the young woman at least believes in the belief she sees expressed in the ceremony. Julio Miranda confirms the view that the woman undergoes a crisis while witnessing the ecbo, "vacillating between the mystery of the black rites and the cynicism of the seduction that she has just undergone" (81). With the companion's "voiceover" translation, the event becomes a poetic turning point in the woman's life. And by its translation of the Afro-Cuban liturgy, the narrative itself performs a new literarization of Afro-Cuban culture. Yet the story's anagnorisis and peripateia must be understood as well in terms of its theme of incomprehension. Cultural difference provides the cata lyst for changing the woman's life. The relation between cultural universes staged within the story remains indeterminate and open-ended, but the story of the couple frames the display of Afro-Cuban signs and makes them over into symbols of renewal in a society distressed by the violence of the Batistato. That kind of "misreading" of Afro-Cuban religion was one that the Revolu tion could accept. The Consecration tf the Prime Directives Fidel Castro pronounced as early as March of 1959, according to Salvador Bueno, that one of the Revolution's goals was to "put an end to that injustice that is racial discrimination," inaugurating with those words a national pro gram of cultural revalorization and reformulation that has led to the found ing of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore and the National Folkloric Troupe (NNH 22). In such official gestures, Cuban writers have read the mandate to rework Afro-Cuban religion in such a way as to make it a part of the official culture. The prologue entitled "Antes de empezar" (Before beginning), of Excilia Saldafia's KeJekcJe (Lucumi: Softly, softly, 1987), for instance, locates this an-

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Di o (lifter Sma thology of retold patakis in the category of "Nuestro folclor afroespanol" (Our Afro-Spanish folklore) before acknowledging the transculturation that created the ethnic mixtures of Cuban society. As Saldana puts it, "Cuba is a new and authentic product, born of Spain and Africa. To look in the mirror of that past is to see our face of today. Our Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro already said the word: 'We are Latinoafroamericans.,"The African contribu tion matters as one of the three traditions in the national blend, if one counts the indigenous heritage, not only because Africanity gave Cuban society its distinctive character, but also because blacks supported and fought in the wars for independence in 1868 and 1895 (Saldana 7, 8, 9). Yet the same African contribution, continues Saldana's prologue, has to be seen in a correct historical perspective. The black masses, brutalized by sla very, discrimination, and deprivation, "searched for a way out of their prob lems in esotericism and magic." This escape is understandable but offers no real solution to the problems created by racism or their root cause, the struc ture of economic inequality. In the postrevolutionary era, reasons Saldana, it is necessary to let go of African-based religion but hold on to "the wisdom of the people" and to the elements of an autochthonous culture associated with the African presence in Cuban society. This means that the pataki-based narratives of Saldana's collection may refer to Ochun and Oggiin but must allegorically tell the story of real humans: "Because the pataki is addressed to men, and these are, in their daily simplicity, or sublimated to deification, the true protagonists." Humanizing the mythology of the divination narratives, Saldana's stories are contributions to the enrichment of a national culture. Afro-Cuban culture thus gains in official recognition and legitimation what it loses in its power of mystification over erstwhile believers. The same pro logue prescribes the alternative to esoteric escapism, namely, a new way of looking at Afro-Cuban religion appropriate to the historical moment: Contemporary reality is something else. Dispossessed of the sacred ele ments, the African universe of which we are beneficiaries shows itself to us in all its splendid beauty, in all its wisdom, in all . its universality. To ignore it is to ignore ourselves; not to know it, not to know ourselves. Many are those who have perfectly learned the Greek Olympus, but not that there exists another Olympus, tropical and their own, at the top of the hill; they know that Aphrodite "provoked," with the apple of discord, the war of the Alafin of Oyo, only by loaning him her braids. . "May the world be grafted onto our republics, but the trunk should be our republics," said Marti.

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RtlififtiiiilttvtlitiM o HI The rewritten patakis that Saldaria offers in Kele kelc are now to be regarded only as literature, as aesthetic objects, as a part of mythology or of the world that should be grafted, as Marti said in the famous metaphor, to the trunk of the Cuban republic. Afro-Cuban religion forms a part of what "we" are and of what "we" should know in order to know "ourselves" once it has been taken out of the ile ocha and relegated to the archives of folklore and com parative mythology (Saldana 10, 11). Once the narrative of a life among the saints reaches the text of Fernandez Robaina's Rccucrdos secretos de dos mujeres publicas (Secret remembrances of two public women, 1983), Afro-Cuban religion belongs to the world of "super stitions." For Consuelo la Charme or Violeta, who have wised up since the triumph of the Revolution, that religion is a sham consisting of an endless series of "porquerias," of worthless tricks or trifles assigned by the santero for the purpose of collecting derechos, his spiritual payments (RSD 56). Lourdes Lopez's "reformed" babalao-informant, Gabriel Pasos, admits that Santeria and its special branch of Ifa divination served to mystify and console the members of its marginalized believers, Pasos included. The Revolution changed all that: "The revolution," writes Lopez, "brings this individual the solution to his material necessities, and now he begins to question the pow ers of the orishas as his economic problems are being resolved." Once the Revolution had triumphed, Lopez tells us in an afterword, Pasos underwent a process of "defanatization" with the help of fellow party members from his work center (Lopez 12, 69). Now rehabilitated, Pasos feels free to dis seminate the secrets of the priestly caste to which he once belonged. And this he does in telling all for Lopez's book. Carpentier's aforementioned la Consagracion de la Primavera takes a more ap proving, affirmative approach to Afro-Cuban religion than Lopez and Pasos by incorporating the myths, doctrine, and ritual of the Abakua Society into an epic vision of the twentieth-century Hispanic revolutions. Seymour Menton has compared la Consagracion with Cesar Leante's Los guerrilleros negros (The black guerillas, 1976), which depicts the struggles of runaway slaves in colonial Cuba to resist recapture and to survive in their mountain encamp ments or palenques. Both history-based novels, judges Menton, affirm the Communist orthodoxy and in effect add a racial dimension to the revolu tionary agenda (Menton, "Novela" 917-20). Carpentier's novelized state ments on Afro-Cuban religion attempted another rapprochement between Afro-Cuban religion and history-based narrative of the kind that (-EcueYamba0! and El reino de este mundo had previously presented. Salvador Bueno charac terizes la Consagracion as a novel based on an "ecumenical conception of cul-

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m o (liitcrkm ture" that marks the extent to which Carpentier has evolved since the "localist limitations" of ;Ecue-Yamba-0! (NNH 21). Within its ecumenical conception, La Consagracion at the same time vindicates Afro-Cuban religion in the name of cultural particularity and authenticity within the postrevolutionary context. Carpentier s Enrique ponders the African contribution to Cuban society as he grows accustomed to the idea that his maid is an omo-Obatald. Enrique con cludes, after a period of reeducation, that the ending of racial discrimination and inequalities in Cuba has in itself justified for the Revolution, especially "since the black, despite his many miseries and humiliations, ha[s] enriched our tradition with his creative presence, contributing powerfully to giving us our own physiognomy" (Carpentier, Consagracion 528). The plot of La Consagracion concerns the story of Vera, a Russian ballerina of conservative and even aristocratic ideas. Vera immigrates to the Cuba of Batista and develops her own sense of a Cuban national identity amidst the events leading up to and following the Revolution. The novel's virtual Cubanization of Vera mirrors a process of cultural hybridization occurring in the narrative itself.l Vera's art of ballet itself figures in the novel as a symbol for the novel's theme of modern Hispanic revolutions: these revolutions belong to a worldhistorical "rite of spring," a ceremony of historical sacrifice and rebirth per formed by revolutionaries of the modern age. The narrative likens their acts to those of the "original" clan, envisioned by Stravinsky and Roerich, of pagan and prehistoric Russian ancestors whose ceremonial sacrifice was in tended to propitiate the earth (Carpentier, Consagracion 12). (The title of the French translation, incidentally, is La Danse sacralc, 1980). In her search for the artistically new, Vera conceives the idea of choreographing Stravinsky's LeSacrc du Printemps with Afro-Cuban dancers from Guanabacoa, with motifs taken from the rites of Santeria and the Abakua. In the realizing of this plan, the avant-garde would recover the authentic gestures of a tribal past. In Vera's envisioned rewriting of Stravinsky's ballet, we could add, the meaning of "consecration" would be enriched by the Afro-Cuban sense of invoking the saint and inviting the orisha's presence into objects of ceremony or the head of the dancer. "Through the consecration," states Cabrera, "which is to say, through the transfer of a superhuman force to an object, the latter takes on personality, acquires the power, the ache of the god or of the spirit who pays attention to him" (YO 156). Invoking that divine force in the manner of a Lucumi or Nanigo, Carpentier's narrative also evokes the ritual surrounding the central symbols of Abakua faith, the speaking drum called Ecue, and the silent drum called

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MifiMirilmlitiM o IV Seseribo, whose prototype was the drum made with the skin of Sikanecua. The narrative attempts to reconcile Abakua myth with official culture by sug gesting a number of universalizing comparisons and substitutions in the restaging of Sikanecua s sacrifice. In Vera s mind, that sacrifice, "with its mecha nism of substitution,... was the same as Iphigenia s, offered by Agamemnon in holocaust to the Gods, and snatched away at the last moment by Artemis, while a white doethere it was a doe and not a goatwhose throat was cut by the sacrificer." The black dancers of Guanabacoa, Vera reflects, will give the ballet a new interpretation in an Afro-Cuban key, making it seem, more than ever before, "truly submitted to elemental, primordial impulses." What was before an evocation of prehistoric rites has now a new frame of reference, for the "Danse sacrale" itself, says Vera to Enrique in reference to a movement in the ballet, "should resemble what you describe when you speak of women possessed by a Santo: ecstatic and gestural hysteria brought to par oxysm" (Carpentier, Consagracion 261, 262). With the metaphor of posses sion, Vera further reworks her mythical subtext of the dance to transform it from an apotheosis of violence into a ritual of reconciliation between the natural order of the feminine with the cultural order of the masculine, an interpretation confirmed in Efik myth by Sikanecua s ascent to the kingdom of heaven to become the bride of Abasi. Consecration becomes a question of devotion, mediation, and union; it need not imitate the ritual mysogynistic violence exalted by Roerich and Diaghilev. Vera therefore plans to conclude the rite not with the sacrifice of the Virgin Elect but instead with the mar riage of the divine couple (Carpentier, Consagracion 312). Analogously, in the marriage of Vera with Enrique, and in the progressive politicization and radicalization of both, we see the gradual reconciliation of aestheticism with revolutionary commitment. It is the vicious murder of her black dancers by Batista's gunmen that finally causes Vera to hate the regime and wish for the success of the guerriUeros in the Sierra Maestra; it is Enrique's heroism and near fatal injury at Playa Giron (the Bay of Pigs) that reunites the once estranged husband and wife in a new Cuba. Carpentier s or Vera's rewriting of the Efik myth, suggesting the symbolic resolution of tensions implicit in the novel's plot, thus proposes a mutual accommodation of politics and religion. But in their novelization, Santeria and the Abakua cul ture become aestheticized when viewed as material for artistic refraining and reinterpretation. They lose some of their soul, much of their mystery. Carpentier s narrative makes an analogous gesture when Jose Antonio, the future publicist, takes Vera on a walk past various shops representing the diverse cultures of old Havana. As they stroll along, he shows Vera a botdnica,

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241 o (litterbin or religious herbal shop, in which the amulets, stones, hatchets, and other "objects of syncretic sorcery" are sold. Jose Antonio remarks, "Here, you find surrealism in its brute form" (Carpentier, Consagracion 336). Whether Carpentier's novel finds more surrealism in Santeria than Santeria in surreal ism is a moot point. La letra con sangre (y tuego) entra One year before Carpentier's characters in La Consagracion would seek le merveilleux in Afro-Cuban ritual and myth, Manuel Cofino's characters discov ered the beauty and power of Lucumi and Abakua religion in Cuando la sangre sc parcce al fuego (When blood looks like fire, 1977).This second novel by Cofino follows the precedent of his La ultima mujcr y el proximo combate (The last woman and the next battle, 1971) in its fragmentary style of collage and in its elabo ration of the "novel of the Revolution and Reconstruction," adding a folkloric element of apparitions, brujas, and bilongos to Cuando la sangre. Like Manuel Granados s earlier Adire y el tiempo roto (Adire and the broken time, 1967), a chaotic novel that I will not examine in these pages, Cuando la sangre features an Afro-Cuban protagonist named Cristino, who as a revoltionary does his part in the making of modern Cuba. Yet before he commits to the cause, the Abakua religion ties Cristino to the culture of poverty and the marginal world of the solar habanero, the Havana tenement. Numerous epi sodes in the novel refer to the Afro-Cuban religion of the solar residents, a religion that one of the novel's narrative voices identifies as a part of a past that the protagonist must overcome and forget with the help of therapy and rehabilitation. Cristino, by undergoing this regimen, subjects himself to a process of personal recentering and restructuring. The solar in which the marginalized lives of Cristino and his neighbors take center stage, in whose central patio African culture is reborn in the sing ing and dancing of bembes, sustains a reminder of the plantation compound, the space in which the slaves could hold social intercourse, perform rituals, and also establish a sort of a modern "anti-plantation," where the self-employed and spiritual guides could "set up shop" (IR 239).There in the solar, in defense against hardships and calamities, it is Cristino's grandmother, Abuela, who keeps alive the old faith in the orishas. Abuela s way of speaking makes her a mysterious, sacred being. Her reli gion sounds like poetry She talks with the trees along the road in Regla. She even asks permission of a ceiba before stepping in its shade. In a spontaneous burst of synesthesia, Abuela tells a young Cristino, "Tinito, the flamboyant has heat inside the trunk and fire blows it up and it comes out through the

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RelipNUflltfilitiM o 241 flowers. That tree has music. Music of the wind enters through the ears, that of the flamboyant enters through the eyes." Abuela s prestige and power are enhanced when her osain, "the feathered gourd that Abuela had hanging in the backyard," is carried by the wind and left hanging in the branches of a sacred ceiba nearby (Cofifio, Cuondo 28-29, 37).The coincidence is really a miracle within Abuela's universe, in which the supernatural is natural. Cristino recalls Abuela s words with a nostalgia for the sense of meaning, wholeness, and harmony that they produced and that subsequent events in his life would shatter. The first paragraph of the text sets up the oppositions of past versus present, of who one was then versus who one is now It is Cristino who now "is other," who now realizes that once, "He lived in a world of gods. Surrounded by misery, blood and dreams. In the blink of danger. In the change of one time for another. He lived in the world of saints, kings and warriors, glut tons and dancers, lechers and virgins, good and bad" (Cofifio, Cuondo 21). Within this retrospective frame of reference, from the perspective of a reeducated Cristino, Cofifio s narration evokes the Afro-Cuban cosmology by intercalating, between the episodes of Cristino s experience and "testimonies" provided by other characters, a series of italicized vignettes that de scribe the principle orishas of the Lucumi pantheon. One narrative "voice" delivers those vignettes. Its descriptions bear no direct relation with the events of the plot, but they provide an entry into the Lucumi-Nanigo thought-world. Beautiful unto themselves, capturing the mythopoetic allure of Afro-Cuban religion, the eighteen vignettes each profile an orisha (including the Olofi and the Jimaguas). The following is a list of the orishas profiled in the vi gnettes (with the corresponding page numbers): Olofi (25) Orisha Oko (127) Yemaya (33-34) Eleggua (133-34) Osain (38-39) Obba (145) Obatala (48-49) Osun (168) Ochosi (65) los Jimaguas (179-80) Oshun (78-79) Oggun (186-87) Inle (92-93) BabaluAye (200-201) Chango (100-101) Oya (206-7) Yewa (106-7) Argayii Sola (209-10) Alvarez rightly observes that "the vignettes about the orishas as much as the psychology of the grandmother, who is the antithesis of the new that is Cristino, her historical negator, turn out to be a swan song, a lovely

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141 o (hcpttrSem crespuscular dimension, the transmutation of a mythology based on super stition into a poetry suggestive of deep syncretic roots" (112). The vignettes, with their impressionistic, disjointed style, contradict the historical reason of the "realist" narrative. Yet at times they illuminate aspects of Cristino s life in the language of myth, if we are willing to make intratextual connections. The description of Yemaya follows shortly upon Cristino s rec ollection of crossing the Bay of Havana (of which Yemaya/laVirgen de Regla is the patron saint) and the mention of Abuela's crossing herself when she saw anything floating on its waters. The orishas are symbolic manifestations of natural phenomena as well as psychological archetypes. The vignettes are juxtaposed with references to other characters. Roli, the streetwise young black who becomes a devoted disciple of Abuela, serves the revolutionary cause as a messenger, intelligence gatherer, and bomb maker. His profile is followed by a poetic profile of Osun, who "keeps people from trembling before death. Without him, life is afraid of the journey without shores. Messenger of the great god and his son, he warns of the end, and gives the final instant. Spy of the gods." In similar fashion, a second-person characterization of Cristino as the haunted revolutionary fighter bears some resemblance to the third-person poetic evocation of the angry warrior Oggun: "He ^oes through life furious. He has never been happy" (Cofirio, Cuando 33-34, 29, 163-64, 166-67, 168, 187).The Afro-Cuban archetypes thus clarify the characters' experience by presenting its fictional double and pattern. At other times, the vignettes run counter to the realist narrative: just be fore the report of Cristino s impressions upon revisiting the solar in which he lived his youth, the description of Yemaya tells us that "She reins in blue eternity with ribbons of foam. She governs the mysteries of the salt waters" (Cofino, Cuando 3). This Yemaya belongs to a beautiful world apart, a Utopia of the spirit, and not to the run-down apartment complex. Both Deschamps Chapeaux and Cuervo Hewitt note that Cristino's Naniguismo constitutes a major obstacle that he must surmount as he joins in the revolutionary movement initiated by Castro and his followers on July 26, 1953. Deschamps Chapeaux observes in his prologue to Cuando la sangre that the novel gathers together cultural remnants of the past, "remainders of yesterday," which include "religious beliefs in permanent collision with re ality, people who marginalize themselves, in short; ballast tied to the heels of the Revolution, which is being worn away into nothing by the irrepressible force of events." For Cuervo Hewitt, the narrative demonstrates Cristino's need to shed the encumbering beliefs in Afro-Cuban religion that have done nothing to alleviate his family's suffering. Nor does the Lucumi-Abakua sys-

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RtlijifRiiiRtftlititfl o 241 tern, in this view, offer its believer any viable means of understanding the sociohistorical situation or of changing the living conditions of its believers (APA 279, 282). Naniguismo is little more than a "memory of underdevel opment," to cite the title of Edmundo Desnoes's novel. When the Revolution begins to build momentum, Cristino, like the narrator of Benitez Rojo's "La tierra y el cielo," must decide once and for all to abandon the religion and join in the struggle. Lucumi and Nafiigo belief, lest it block the process of personalization in solidarity with the anti-imperialist struggle, must be re processed into folklore and become "mere" poetryor exorcised like a ghost. "The revolutionary ideology, always in ascent, defeats the ancestral beliefs" (Deschamps Chapeaux 7). The chiasmus of the novel's title signals both the rhetorical structure of the narrative and the form of Cristino's conversion. When Cristino was a child, his father showed him how "the fire looks like blood" when he used it to harden the wickers on the baskets he wove or to burn leaves. But Cristino knows otherwise, as the second-person narrator confirms: "You see the flames again and you think that blood looks like fire, which changes everything, destroys, creates everything and makes it born, pure and eternal, new forever and ever" (Cofino, Cuando 234). Chiasmus is an antithetical repetition in which a balanced second phrase of a sentence repeats the two terms of the first phrase, but reversing them. Analogously, the general overturning of the paternal (Afro-Cuban) word and paternal order heralds the emergence of Guevara's "new man of socialism." Fire moreover constitutes a mark of Cristino s identity, linked with the word of the father, ironically foreshadow ing Cristino s assignment, after the triumph of the Revolution, to the Minis try of Industries, where he designs matchboxes. (Cofino, Cwndo 234, 235). In the narrative's dominant materialist perspective, Santeria, like Vaudou in Carpentier's El reino de estc mundo, is shown to lack a critical capacity to judge history, as when Abuela tells her proud story of being received in the Presi dential Palace by none other than the First Lady herself, la seriora Batista. "She was blinded," remarks Cristino, "by her saints, not capable of seeing nor of comprehending bitter reality My anxieties, my uneasiness, my struggle, were alien to her." Later on, Abuela's divinations with the obi, or coconut pieces, and with the cowries of the dilogguncombined with her supplications to Ochosi, "god of prisons," and to Eleggua, "of paths and destinies"do nothing to reveal the identity of Cristino s father's murderer. In the end, it seems to be the Department of State Security, and not Abuela's oracles, that reveals the murderer's identity: the ex-Captain Aracelio Gonzalez, known as the Tiburon (Shark), his capture representing a triumph of rational-

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144 o (Inter Sera ism over the failed magic arts of Abuela. In an earlier passage referring to the same event, the narrative voice tells Cristino, "what the gods could not do, humans could" (Cofino, Cuando 165, 44, 239, 186). Cuba under Castro is to be disciplined, no-nonsense, postwar, practical, and myth-poor. The change of consciousness requires a change of attitude toward language: with the Revolution, language is to become concrete, ob jective, unequivocal. This changeover is registered in Cristino*s consciousness, confirming the assertion of the early Barthes that "myth on the left" is "inessential" precisely because "[Revolution excludes myth" (Mythologies 146-47). For the new Cristino, now is the time to study the texts of Marxism; there is no time for orishas, those "beautiful but useless gods," who have now become "exiles in agony." In addition to his studies in the Basic School of Revolutionary Instruction and his work in the Ministry of Industries, Cristino s sessions with the psychiatrist Dr. Gutierrez help him through a painful process of "adaptation." Cristino struggles to overcome a "personal ity conflict," a "situational neurosis," as documented by Gutierrez, since Cristino is "[s]ubmitted to the pressure of the epoch and a human essence that forced him to negate his upbringing" (Cofino, Cuando 225, 226, 218, 235, 202). Yet something is lost in this deprogramming, as the narrative suggests in celebratory descriptions of the beauty and pleasure that the orishas bring into human existence. Myth is a vital component of everyday talk and pro vides the consensual basis of a community, as dialogues among the neigh bors and family illustrate. A particular woman who "look[s] naked" even when dressed, one who rubs palm oil on her body and initiates Cristino into the mysteries of carnal love, is compared by the neighbors to Ochun. As a vignette will later illuminate, Ochun is "the holygoddesswhore and carouser"; and [w]ith a hammer she drives in love and desire in the hearts of people" (Cofino, Cuando 59-60, 78, 79). By these intratextual connections, the two worlds, of the solar and of Lucumi myth, intersect and interilluminate. The latter gives perspec tive and poetic depth to the former. In addition to mythical narratives from the religion, Cofino includes in teresting examples of bilongos and cures that Abuela performs for her family. Cristino recalls the failed ritual with which Abuela attempted to discover her son s murderer: "At twelve midnight we went to the Luyano River. She grasped a piece of black cloth, crumpled it, tied knots in it and threw it into the river. 'There I throw the life of the one who killed my son/ She took out a black hen from the bag and opened it up with the knife. She took out its intestines and threw them into the river. Afterwards she ran the hen through

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Relijiiiiri Revelation o 14$ with the knife and left it fixed in the ground. 'As this hen rots, so will rot the one who killed my son'" (Cofifio, Cuando 58). The setting at the riverside recalls numerous Yoruba river godsYemonja, Erinle or Inle, Yewa, Ondo, Oba, Oshun, Areand suggests their divine intervention in the revenge plot (YSN 87-90).The knotted cloth and the black chicken, by a substitutive or metaphoric logic, stand in for the unidentified killer. By the novels dominant rationalist logic, Abuelas bilongo comes to no avail, for it does not operate within the Revolution's narrative of liberation. Within another narrative framework, however, it could be said that Abuela's bilongo does work nonetheless. The killing of the black and white hens by the river does at least precede the discovery of the murderer by state security (Cofifio, Cuando 58, 238). It would be presumptuous to say that the ritual does not work simply because the state was the agency of that vengeance: the desired event did, after all, come to pass. At this level of post hoc narratization, the novel does give some credence to Abuela's magical conflation of causality with sequentiality rather than simply allowing the scientific, rationalistic ex planation to prevail unchallenged. In the end, however, the orishas are defeated by the goddess Reason. After massacring her animals, destroying her cane, and smashing her saints, a dev astated Abuela is forced by her profound disillusionment to swallow her own tongue, painfully committing suicide in a manner once practiced by slaves during the colonial period. Yet Afro-Cuban practices continue after Abuela's death. In the funeral ceremony or ituto dedicated to her, Abuela is buried with her cowries, with corn, smoked hutia, and fish; she is dressed in the same blue dress she wore as an initiate in Abakua; a black cock is killed. And her followers continue to look to Abuela for guidance even after her death. Cristino comments, "The site where she was buried became a place of pil grimage. For a long time they said that Abuela was making prodigies and miracles.They said that a seagull fluttered above the cross, that at night a blue fire was seen, and if you came close, a smell of the sea came from the earth. And I don't know who planted leadworts around her tomb." The evocative passage indicates how faith continues to find the signs that validate faith in a way that finds and makes poetic beauty on the occasion of the Santera's death. Nonetheless, it is Abuela's suicidealong with the later revelation that Abuela's grave has been opened, desecrated, her bones used in ngangas and amuletsthat seals the novel's condemnation of Abuela's Afro-Cuban magic (Cofifio, Cuando 228-29, 230, 231, 242). There is no happy synthesis or crossing of cultural universes here; incom mensurability and conflict are accentuated, not smoothed over, as they are in

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24< o (kijttrSm Carpentier s balletic vision. Since the dominant code of Cofino s novel obeys the imperative of the Revolution, orisha-worship comes to appear at best an irrelevance, at worst, an impediment to needed social change. An epigraph by Marx at the opening of the novel already anticipated the competition be tween rival interpretations: "Every mythology subdues, dominates, molds the forces of nature in the imagination; and therefore disappears when those forces are truly dominated" (Cofino, Cuando 19).The explicit message seems clear enough: that mythology belongs to "mere" imagination and can be dispensed with once the forces of nature have been brought under scientific, "real" control. Yet I would insist that another reading of the epigraph, one subversive of the novel's explicit message, is tenable: the "forces of nature" that can be dominated, "realmente dominadas," are none other than "las fuerzas de la naturaleza en la imagination," that is to say, those forces conceived mythologically, forces "in the imagination" that periodically requires the formation of another "mythos" (for example, the "mythos" of enlightenment reason, science, progress, dialectical materialism, or official history) to subjugate and mold the forces of nature, such that one narrative paradigm can be said to overpower and subsume another. Cuando \a sangre does not so much dis credit Afro-Cuban religion as demote it in favor of the myth of materialism, legitimizing the revolutionary ethos at the expense of other, less "scientific" versions of the truth. That is to say, the secular myth of the Revolution dis places and devalues the sacred myth of the Ecue and the orishas. Yet the metalanguage used to demystify the Nanigo cult, even to wrest legitimacy from it in calling it a "cult" rather than a bona fide religion, must itself be come subject to demystification and analysis. Socialist ideology, like Santeria, has its limitations and blindnesses, and so the text of the novel pushes against the totalizing and historicizing monism preached by the narrative voice of officialdom. With its kaleidoscopic shifting of perspectives, this multivoiced narrative projects a view of reality that is more pluralistic than that valorized by the explicit narrative. Yet by Cristino's conversion to the revolutionary program, the narrative's voice of reason is allowed to drown out the minoritarian voices of religious myth and doctrine. Orisha worship, after all, does not cut the sugar cane or defend the Revolution against its enemies. If, as Cofino's novel illustrates, Afro-Cuban religious culture comprises a body of narrative knowledge opposed to the materialist culture sanctioned by the state, the menace of Afro-Cuban religion so conceived must be man aged, reworked, sometimes tamed, sometimes refitted and rechanneled, deterritorialized and reterritorialized to serve the common good as defined by

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XclifiMiilRtiilitiM o 247 the state. Although the practice of Afro-Cuban religion was suppressed or discouraged from 1959 to the 1970s, a revised Afro-Cubanism could func tion to promote nationalist values and denounce imperialism. Beginning around 1977, Afro-Cuban myth and scholarship in Afro-Cuban religion thus underwent a certain museumizing folklorization, as evident in exhibitions of Afro-Cuban culture in old Havana, in the small museum adjoined to the cathedral of Regla, and in the cultural centers of Santiago de Cuba. As an alternative to outright prohibition, an overall strategy of containment, secu larization, aestheticization, and possibly commodification has become the preferred method. In the Folklore Museum Folklorization serves to relegate a vital, lived cultural form to the category of the artistic and picturesque, thus neutralizing its ideological power. Barnet looks on this process of aestheticization with approval: "From Santeria, from the wealth of its songs and dances, of its mythology, will remain those per manent values in the purely aesthetic order. The allegory to its philosophical and cosmogonic models will also be valid in artistic and literary creation" (FV 197). Moore disapprovingly argues on the other hand that the Cuban government has attempted to folklorize Afro-Cuban religion in order to send out a deceptive message that it was promoting both its growth in particular and black ethnic expression in general. In December 1961, Moore states by way of illustration, the National Institute of Ethnology and Folklore, led by Argeliers Leon and Isaac Barreal, was commissioned to study all aspects of Afro-Cuban culture, including music, mannerisms, and customs. Of the Afro-Cuban religions especially targeted, according to an announcement at the opening of the Institute, were "those sects which have come into conflict with the Revolution" (CBA 99-100). Folklorization is not necessarily an unhealthy development, however, as some materialist theory suggests. In his essay "Observations on Folklore," Antonio Gramsci writes, in a manner anticipating James Figarola's defense of a "mulatto culture," that "folklore" should be studied seriously as the artistic and religious expression of the popular masses. For folklore in this view is a multifaceted reflection of a popular consciousness and often articulates con cepts of "natural right" that coincide with official concepts, as was the case with French Catholicism and the liberal ideology of the French Revolution. In so politicizing folklore and recognizing its antihegemonic potential, Gramsci values what RafFaele Corso has called the "contemporary pre-history" sustained in its multilayered, heterogeneous genres. At the same time,

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141 o (kipttrStfti folklore and the art of the dominant class do not necessarily represent op posed values, for they sustain an interrelationship analogous to that of the artisanal "arte menor" with the higher and more prestigious "arte mayor." Popular verbal art has always drawn upon the art of the elites but remains "fragmentary" and "unstable": "folklore has always been tied to the culture of the dominant class and, in its own way, has drawn from it motifs which have then become inserted into combinations with previous traditions It deals, in any case, with a relative and disputable 'pre-history' and there could be nothing vainer than to try to find the different stratifications in a single folklore area." By recombining motifs "with previous traditions," art prom ises a positive redefinition or regeneration of the national culture. Because the sources of this stratified folkloric content are usually difficult to trace and because folklore "is much more unstable and fluctuating than language and dialects," folkloric taxonomies must for the most part remain conjectural and analyses of form and content for the most part semantic (Gramsci, Cultural Writings 194-95). By affirmation or negation or both, it has been the function of cultural politics in Cuba to deal with the indeterminacy of folk lore, to manage its freeplay with elements of tradition and with the official culture. Although the Cuban revolutionary regime once attempted to suppress or extirpate Afro-Cuban religion, it seems to have shifted its attitude to accom modate a concept of folklore similar to Gramsci *s. Various treatments of Afro-Cuban "folklore," such as those by Carpentier and Cofifio that we have dis cussed, exhibit this integrating impulse to categorize, contain, and control it such that it "does its part" for the social whole. Sacred narratives lose their authority, but they are refunctioned to participate in a broader narrative of self-determination. Barnet refers to the process of by which myths are secu larized: "They are beginning to lose that religious core [mcdula, marrow] in order, without weakening, without losing their original beauty, to transform themselves into an accepted and even functional popular history. Functional because, although myth serves as a religious background, the people use it to explain many things" (FV 159).The explanatory, illustrative or instrumental function of myth designates the use that the realist postrevolutionary writer would make of it. Another way to make myth serve politics is to preserve it and publish it while avoiding comment on the political implications it might have. The fourteen pataki-based narratives of Martinez Fure's collection Didlogos imaginarios (Imaginary dialogues, 1979) are included in the article titled "Patakin: literatura sagrada de Cuba" (Patakis: sacred literature of Cuba).

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RtlifiMirillwIitiii o 14) Martinez Fure's versions of the patakis, like their oral "originals," exemplify the procedures that the clients of the babalao should follow in order to solve their problems. Within the "imaginary dialogues" of which they form a part, the divination stories legitimate the divination ritual itself, by illustrating the consequences of carrying throughor not carrying throughthe instruc tions of Ifa. In addition, the stories display their own "packaging" as artifacts for folkloric consumption, complete with classifications, glosses, and footnotes. The patakis have been divided into myths and fables. The myths tell of the lives and exploits of the orishas, recounting the creation of the world and humans and often explaining the origins of practices or prohibitions. The fables, on the other hand, feature animals as characters and serve to teach a moral value, often castigating antisocial behavior motivated by greed, envy, sloth, and pride (DI 213-14). Martinez Fure lists a number of features of this oral literature, of which an abbreviated version follows: 1. Simple and direct style. 2. Magical realism. 3. Reiteration as a stylistic element. 4. Insertion of songs within narrations. 5. Shifts in verbal tense from past to present and vice versa. 6. Didacticism and moralizing, explicit in the end proverb. 7. Propaganda exalting the priestly caste. 8. Universal symbolism; exaltation of human and social values. In addition to listing these features, Martinez Fure briefly characterizes the three "levels of development and antiquity" of his patakis: the oldest, of strictly Yoruba "content"; the intermediary, presenting a mixture of African and colonial cultures; and the most recent, developed in Cuba on the Yoruba model (DI 216-17). Through his presentation of myths and folktales, Martinez Fure resumes the work of compilation initiated by Ortiz, Cabrera, and Lachatanere in the first half of the century and thus maintains a safe distance from political agendas and exigencies. APiftnfOotifOrWt Explicit references to Afro-Cuban religion in the postrevolutionary era, espe cially to the Naniguismo of Regla and Marianao, appear in Dora Alonso's "Los ojos de Simon" (Simons eyes, from Cuentos [Stories], 1976).The story expresses skepticism toward the beliefs of its Nanigo characters yet sympa thy for their plight and understanding for their desire to find solace in the

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m o (htpter Seiei orishas. In elegiac tones, the narration recreates the mythical Afro-Cuban world as a "desorbitada poesia"an uncommon, out of proportion, "outof-orbit" poetrywhose beauty is comforting yet useless. The story's narration tells us that Simon Valdes is a dwarf. The story opens with reference to the death of Simon's santera mother and of Simon looking through her cuarto famba, which he has inherited, "with the hope of find ing something more than the adorned canopied altar, dressed up with in digo blue satin, where the Virgin of Regla, covered with necklaces, looked with knowing eyes." The text evokes childhood impressions of drums, at tributes, mysteries. "Iremes danced between vegetable beats of bitter broom, and the men came to be initiated before the ceiba and the royal palm" (Alonso, Cuentos 197).The text prepares us for the appearance of orishas. Yet the invocations of his parents and the "Morua Yansa" of the Abakua potencia have no power to cure Simon of his dwarfism. The narrative goes on to interweave citations of the Lucumi hagiography into a history of Simon's growing mental alienation as Simon's parents attempt other cures. A rooster passed over Simon's body, by a logic of metonymy, should have taken away the evil or poetic cause of Simon's defect, but this cure fails, as does a purifi cation invoking the Ireme Encanima and a streaking with yeso, chalk, or efun (ground eggshell) (Alonso, Cuentos 198-99). The allusion to Obatala as Simon's "godfather" is apt because he is the orisha credited with fashioning human bodies, and so he bears the blame for creating human deformities. In Simon's eyes, the zoo where he obtains employment provides ample opportunity for reestablishing the desorbitada poesia of his own orisha-worship. Because here, for Simon, the gods are present. "He couldn't help but notice that the place where so many animals and plants were gathered together was inhabited by the black gods and presided by Osain, the owner of the Mountain. Simon takes refuge in the zoo. He feels at home there, especially after disturbances take place around the university involving a cadaver, police, and tear gas. As a zoo attendant and feeder, Simon can continue to make offerings to the orishas of their favorite foods: "And to Eleggua he would bring mice and cane liquor; tomatoes to Chango, saving for Obatala, aU white of starch and jasmines, the sweet pulp of the custard apples." The narrator does not fail to mention that some orishas arrived dressed up as Catholic saints, "in the symbiosis imposed by the white slaveholders" (Alonso, Cuentos 200, 202, 203). Simon's adherence to the Abakua ways even after the triumph of the Revolution constitutes not so much a counterrevolutionary stance as an adja cent and complementary way of interpreting reality. It does not interfere

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KdifiiiMlkfilitiM o SI with revolutionary politics as usual at any rate. As Cuervo Hewitt notes, "Simon defers to the presence of a mythological dimension, anachronistic, contiguous to the political events of a Revolution, from which the socio political situation is perceived as one more manifestation of the invisible natu ral forces that live with man and are never used up because they are always eternal" (APA 94). Yet some awareness of that sociopolitical situation is registered in the ar rival, at the zoo, of a new group of hybridscomposite creatures, mon strosities combining animal and human parts, including centaurs and merpeople: all in all, "[a] group that mixed horns, manes, feathers and scales in a single anguish." The newcomers join the company of the zoo animals and the black gods, "who perhaps would be able to understand their different form, perhaps disposed by Olofi, the only one, he who knows why things are that nobody understands, the Olorun who doesn't come down to the world to fix it" (Alonso, Cucntos 204, 205).The creator allows the suffering of this world, epitomized by Simon s suffering, to continue without sur cease. In the eyes of Simon, the world and zoo become a bestiary of sad and fantastical creatures. Although the disorbited poetry of the orishas once cre ated a schoncWdt of illusory transcendence, the uneasy awareness of the orishas makeshift construction intensifies Simon's feelings of alienation and absur dity. "Los ojos de Simon" thus sings an elegy of Afro-Cuban religion as only religion, or as an errant satellite orbiting around an anxious planet. Fran Where the Siagen Wrald Be What could be paradoxically called the "classic" postmodern treatment of Afro-Cuban religion in Cuban prose fiction succeeds in evoking the desire for unification and centering of religious discourse as it simultaneously dis plays a secularizing impulse to deflate religious claims to transcendence. A double tendency implicit in the verbal aspect of religion itself, one that tends toward both centering and decentering, characterizes Severo Sarduy s De dondc son Jos cantantes (Where the singers are from, 1967), which was writ ten in Paris under the influence of the "Tel Quel" group of structuralistpoststructuralist theorists, far from the scrutiny of Cuban culture ministers and their Union of Writers and Artists.2 Rather than attempt to unearth the deep symbols of religious meaning, as Cofiiio's novel does with a certain solemnity, Sarduy s "telquelian" narrative careens irreverently through the extensive regions composed by religions networks of signifiers.The novels treatment of Afro-Cuban religion is "superficial"in the sense of "shallow"

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151 o (lipttrtoei but also in the sense of scanning signifying surfaces producing the illusion of depth. What matters is not the search for the meaning but following a map of consciousness, with the understanding that the terrain through which the map guides the traveler very much resembles a torn and possibly crumpled map (of maps) in itself. Julio Miranda describes De donde son los cantantes as "a sort of dynamic col lage, continually superimposing new elements in a discourse situated on the level of metaphor" (92). The characters of that dynamic collage are more narrative functions than characters, for they put on and take off per sonalities like so many masks, and they embark on a phantasmagorical jour ney beginning in republican Cuba, going back to medieval Spain, and then returning to Cuba. Undergoing those transformations and translations, they pass through the three immigrant cultural worlds that together sum up the ethnic mix of la cubanidad: the Chinese, the African, and the Spanish. The Afri can elements appear in what Miranda calls "a heavily ornamented procession of pseudomiracles from Santiago de Cuba to the capital." The crossing from east to west, from Santiago to Havana, gives some structure to an otherwise chaotic narrative as it also suggests the parade of the comparsa of the carnival group, whose activities in Epiphany or Holy Week street celebrations hark back to Kongo and Yoruba ritual processions (Miranda 92, 123-24; see Thompson, "Recapturing" 19-20). Selfhood in this extroverted world of simulacra and appearance is not es sence but artifice, or "self-service," to use the narrative's term. For after ap plying wig, eyeshadow, and beauty marks, Socorro does not forget to put on her "Yoruba necklaces," the elekes whose colored beads probably include in this instance the yellows of Ochun and the blues of Yemaya. The general who lusts after Socorro's "twin," Auxilio, wears a uniform and medals and invokes "the invincible Chang6."The mutating, name-changing Mortal Perez, obsessed with the Chinese opera singer Flor de Loto (Lotus Flower) or Cenizas de Rosa (Rose Ashes) becomes el Matarife (the Butcher) and el Libidinoso (the Libidinous one), and Flor de Loto turns into Chola Anguengue, the Ochun conga whom the text perhaps erroneously identifies as "the queen of arms," an epithet perhaps more appropriate for Chango as Santa Barbara (Sarduy, Dc dondc 14, 19). Yet these identifications are not fixed indefinitely nor does the archetypal reading reveal any "secret" fundament of identity.True to their names, Socorro and Auxilio are no one in themselves but both give help and cry out for it. As mutually duplicating twins they are themselves as lacking in essence as

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KelifiNiiiRevilitin o E Cabrera Infante s starstruck Arsenio Cue and Silvestre. In the already cited chapter titled "A New Version of Events: Parca and General," the desire-driven pursuit is underway, and the narrator says that "the Pyrrhic invoked the pa troness of artillerymen, the invincible Chango, to which she responded by appealing to the queen of river and sky, her antidote and detente: you don't know anything yet." Counterbalancing the Generals invocation of Chango/ Santa Barbara, the epithet "queen of the river and the sky" again refers to Ochun, and the detente is the painted or embroidered image of the saint worn, like a talisman, on the chest. Yet the object of the General's desire is but the mirage projected narcissistically by his self's own need: the image of La Ming pursued by "G" is therefore nothing more than "a pure absence, she is what she is not," such that the conquest of La Ming would indeed constitute a costly, Pyrrhic victory for the other-centered self. The image in the mirror of the self-service cafe, while suggesting this specular interplay of self and other, evokes the number four, sacred number of completion or totality, although this described vision may be purely "imaginary": "So it is that, seen from above, from an imaginary mirror that we can situate for example above the cash register of the self-service ... the whole is a giant four-leaf clover, or an animal that looks toward the four cardinal points, or a Yoruba sign of the four roads" (Sarduy, Dedonde 19, 61, 38, 20-21). The four-leaf clover mirrors the quadripartite concept of Cuban culture as a blending of the Spanish, African, Chinese, and the virtually extinct Indian cultures. It also emulates the Bantu tendwa nzd konao, charting the daybreak, noon, sunset, and midnight: the four points of the sun's revolution around the world of the living and the world of the dead. Those four cardinal points of the cosmos are repeated again in the crossroads of Eleggua and the four corners of the Board of Ifa, which symbolizes the world and whose four cardinal points are called ati guoro, ati guale, ati gualone, and ati cantari (see Sanchez-Boudy 34, 21). Before setting off on her journey toward Havana and literary immortality, Dolores Rondon recalls having offered fruits to the saints of her altar, "asking then that they open up the four roads to me" (Sarduy, De donde 82). The sacred number four also refers to the four days that it took Oddudua or Ochanla to create the world. In Sarduy s text, the fouritself a doubled doublethus constitutes the symbol that refers to all other symbols, or a metasymbol, figured here by the metaphor of the doubled reflection and the schema of the doubled self facing its doubled other. The implication is that there is no religious transcendence except in specular doublings and shifting symbolizations, which are implied in the

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154 o Chapter Seven very being of literature and its (non) relation to some nonlinguistic reality In pedantic reply to Narrator One's equating literature with an emetic, Narrator Two confirms that writing induces disgorgement or at least works a nontranscendent spewing-forth of words on words and things, for all words and things, if they are and mean anything, are part of everything and grounded ultimately upon nothing: "everything returns to everything, that is to say to nothing, nothing is everything" (Sarduy, De donde 58). Language, that is to say, and literature as its test case have no ultimate referent in either empirical or transcendental "reality" The ambiguous divine absence is re lated to the "sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, the definition of being," or, which is the same question, the ground of being itself In an illuminating gloss on Heidegger, Kenneth Burke has reasoned that the ground of being can only be Nothing, the ultimate context and counter part of being (RR 25). In the first chapter of the "Curriculum Cubense" section of the novel, Auxilio has already given Socorro the contradictory word on being and nonbeing: "This is the situation: we have remained and the gods left, they took the boat, they went in trucks, they crossed the border, they shit in the Pyrenees. They all left. This is the situation: we left and the gods remained. Seated. Lying low, taking a siesta, enchanted by life, dancing the Ma Teodora, the initial son, the repetitive son, turning the air, as if they were hanged." Identity is left hanging in the void by the departure of the transcendent; but then again, that void is filled by sacred/secular song or the repetitive force of the orishas' personality within the realm of culture, or by the layering of signifying surfaces in the palimpsest of Cuban religious cultures. The son or Afro-Cuban song that is repeated is the figure that fills the void, giving the illusion of depth to the palimpsest, which is after all only sedimented writing(s). In this twilight, the idols are but a flickering phantasmic presence, a part of popular culture, as observed in the narrative's "Sexteto habanero": "The gods / went away, they stayed, / those who died with Beny More who hallucinated with him, / or still live in the Havana orchestras" (Sarduy, De dondc 12, 98). By thus equivocating with its impudent double-talk, Sarduy's text rehearses the interplay of divine being and absence in the modern world. The transvestites Auxilio and Socorro are mirror images of each other's appearance but also reflections of the images of femininity handed down by cabaret culture and orisha worship. Socorro, as much as Auxilio, is judged as "[i]nesencial" outside the "Domus Dei," but then again, their inessentiality is the "essence" of the human. Their Cuban identity has no core but relies on a series

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MifiiifriKeTilitin E of specular (mis)identifications with each other or with the orishas. In a later section, Dolores Rondon, the "mulata wihedolamesca" (Wifredo Lamesque mulatta) described as "steeped [calada] in saints," will in reiterative fashion declare herself "legitimate daughter of Ochun, the queen of the river and heaven" (Sarduy, Dcdonde 13, 60). Like an Ochun of the patakis, Dolores will journey in search of her fortune, but not from the river to Olofi's hill; she will make her way from Camaguey toward Havana, where she will join Senator Mortal Perez and make her debut. Artificein the form of makeup, clothing, transvestitism, ritual, language, and artfills in the lack of this "female" inessentiality In the chapter "Orquestica sivaica" (Little Shivaic orchestra) of the section "By the River of Rose Ashes," Auxilio and Socorro have been transformed into the semblance of the Hindu deity of destruction, or into the Bald Divinities, and they are seated and riding on their motor scooters. A description of their movements prompts the following comparison: "As on aYoruba altar the heads of the saints shine in the chalice, surrounded by rotten fruits and roosters with their throats cut, so among horns and levers, emerge the heads of the DeadAlive (Muertas-Vivas): white eyes on white faces, hairs of mint crowned by flames, broken eyelids from which roll two little threads that divide their faces into fringes, Byzantine coins" (Sarduy, De donde 36). On the altar des ecrated by the remains of offerings, the dead chickens lie in a jumble of symbols signifying nothing but their own drained symbolicity The passage consists of one extended simile likening the iconic image of santos to the reincarnated jimaguas, now both dead and alive, the appropriate dual condi tion for textual bearers of texts. The two transvestites are "Byzantine coins," both displaying the formalized, colorful figures of Byzantine religious sub jects in gold or mosaic and embodying the doubleness-duplicity symbolized in the two sides of a coin. It is appropriate that Shiva the destroyer should preside over the sacrifice, a symbolic act joining death with life in a single two-sided gesture reinscribing the difference. The immortality that religion promises is neither the one of heavenly salvation nor the other of enchain ment to the wheel of life and death: it is instead the endless recurrence of a figural language, the self-reproduction of the signs and symbols that beto kens transcendence but delivers instead the endless relay of their deferred meaning. By foregrounding the self-referring facts of language and artifice in the manner just described, Sarduy in De donde son \os cantantes and other texts dis plays the hallowed but hollow signifier of the Afro-Sino-Hispanic religious

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M o (lipttrtou system(s). Philip Barnard, translator of Sarduy's Para la voz (For voice, 1978), corroborates our judgment that Sarduy's work "exemplifies a displacement of literature onto a negative, plural, empty movement of language, rather than repressing that movement, suppressing literature (in other words rheto ric) in favor of its ostensible aesthetic or ideological value" (10). Yet this "empty" rhetoric, in signifying nothing, signifies its own self-replenishing creative power of signification and/or signification of creative power. Brahma creates and Vishnu upholds and Shiva destroys what Brahma creates, and so on. Upon a layer of recodified Hindu signs, the signs of Afro-Cuban religion reinscribed in Sarduy's textual palimpsest trace out a possible route through fragments of rites and mythsscenarios of transmogrificationby which the reading subject vicariously experiences the alternating creation and de struction of the already "vicarious" self. Jeurner Back to the Source By its refusal of transcendental signifieds, the postmodern discourse of sig nifying surfaces, polysemy, masking, fragmentation, and self-recursive ver bal play exhibited in De donde son los contontcs does not simply destroy religious meaning but foregrounds the aesthetic mechanisms working toward build ing coherence, continuity, order, community, and effects of meaning in religious signification. In contrast to Sarduy's novel, Eugenio Hernandez Espinosa's drama Maria .Antonia (1979) presents those mechanisms from the perspective of belief. The drama defies dessicating analysis in entertaining the possibility that the Lucumi "metaphors of divinity" are somehow divine metaphors "in truth," and not only metaphors of other metaphors. The play appeared at a time when folklorization under the government's auspices was the official policy, but it has a reputation in Cuba for fidelity to the language, ritual, and myth of Lucumi religion. The play's protagonist is Maria Antonia, beautiful and sensuous daughter of Ochun; in Sergio Giral's movie based on the play, she wears diaphanous yellow. More exacdy, Maria Antonia emulates Ochun Shekeshe Afigueremo, the happy one who lives at the river's mouth and tempts the surly Oggun to come down from his forest retreat (Hernandez Espinosa 116). Maria Antonia thus embodies a Cuban archetype, the passionate mulatta who steals away husbands. And Maria Antonia believes in the saints, although she does not always obey them. The opening scene of Maria Antonia presents the character of the Madrina conducting a limpieza or cleansing with Cumachela and the protagonist.The

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MifiiiiriRmlitioi o 15? Madrina departs from the normal protocol, first invoking "Baba Orumila," or Ifa, and then praying for protection from the great evils of this life: "kosi aro, kosi ikii, kosi eye, kosi efo, kosi ina, kosi achelii, ire owo"; that is, "Grant that there be no sickness, nor death, nor blood, nor curse, nor dishonor, nor quarrel, nor trouble with justice, with a blessing of money" (see Cabrera, AVL 194, 288). Next, the Madrina continues the ceremony in Lucumi, pray ing to Ochun, Maria Antonia's orisha, that she lead and not abandon her daughter. Moforibalc, or respectful greetings, go to Eleggua, Olofi, Chango, and Yemaya. With the registro or consultation of the babalao, Maria Antonia learns that someone has thrown her a curse ("Le han echado un daiio"), and that she has lost her ache ("lo ha perdido"). To restore Maria Antonia to happiness, it will be necessary to cleanse her thoroughly Madrina tells the babalao, "Erase her inside. Pull her out by the roots and sow her again" (Hernandez Espinosa 7, 9, 10).Thus with metaphors that invoke replant ing and writing (or more precisely, its negation, as in "Borrela"), the divina tion scene demonstrates the manner in which the Afro-Cuban oracle intro duces a new narrative into the subject's construction of the real, such that the individual may comprehend "life" as a coherent narrative. Ifa goal is wished for within the context of the new narrative, the reality to which the client aspires, as James Figarola puts it, "does not substitute factual reality but rather rises up inside it, and within it emphasizes the attitude and even the struggle for a better situation" (SMD 76).Through divination, imagination serves the ends of self-perfection or of self-fulfillment, through the imagining of a new configuration of facts. Yet the individual must take the initiativeby per forming sacrifice and making an effortto change the basic situation. This Maria Antonia refuses to do. The second babalao warns Maria Antonia of the disaster her disobedience invites. He throws the ekuele necklace and gives this counsel: "Hum, if you don't know the law by which you have to live here, you will learn it in the other world. . Look, the sailor is the son of the sea, exposed to whatever the sea wishes. You like putting yourself above other people. So you under stand me better, you had wanted things that don't belong to you." A "bad woman," a "homewrecker" who has already twisted the path of more than one man, Maria Antonia does not heed the law of her community. Others disapprove of her behavior, call her a troublemaker, and throw water out into the street to dispel her disruptive influence (Hernandez Espinosa 12, 68). Her offense is "bravuconeria," insolencebut she, like the sailor subject to the law of the sea, will suffer the consequences of misbehavior.

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m o CkiptfrSetei Maria Antonia does indeed "twist the path" of the boxing champion Julianfighting son of Oggunby performing a "tying" ritual, an amarre, to bind up his desire. That ritual consists of calling a personal "anima" and all other souls or spirits of earth and sea. Then Maria Antonia verbalizes the the desired outcome: that Julian follow behind her "like the dead man be hind the cross and the live one upon the cross." Julian's desire is finally "tied" when Maria Antonia pronounces the formula, "with two I measure him and with three I tie him, the blood of his heart I drink and his heart I snatch away." The surrounding chorus of iyalochas comments by uttering YorubaLucumi proverbs: "Cabeza tiene mala cosa""Head has something bad" and the saying that corresponds to Okana sode and Ofun: ";La fosa esta abierta!," "The grave is open!" Disregarding the babalao's warning in acting on her passion for Julian, Maria Antonia puts a magic powder in his chcquete, a drink popular in Santeria. Unexpectedly, the potion kills him (Hernandez Espinosa 58, 89). The play comments on that action and declares its own "thesis" in the scene of its tenth "cuadro" or frame, where the Madrina delivers a lengthy monologue while possessed by Yemaya, who speaks through her. Yemaya la ments the lot of her children, delivered over to crimes of blood and destruc tive passion. "Man, look at man!," she cries; "you offer sacrifices in vain if you don't clean your house which is my house. The day will come when you learn to walk with a strong and tranquil step." Yet that day never comes for Maria Antonia. The proverb from a second Ifa reading ominously reveals that she has turned things upside down: she should have remembered that "the head is what leads the body." Repulsed and sickened by her destructive irre sponsibility, she attempts to renounce men and reject the overtures of her former lover, Carlos. Angered by the rebuff, Carlos thrusts a knife into her groin (Hernandez Espinosa 100, 105, 107-9). Maria Antonia dies, the victim of her destiny, an Afro-Cuban destiny fore told in the odu figures of the Lucumi religion to which she subscribed. Hernandez Espinosa's Afro-Cuban play and the divination ritual that it stages rehearse mutually reflecting scenarios of narrative transitions from structure to structure, crystallizing as they contemplate the "world of desire" (see Frye 184). By her dependence on divination and magic, Maria Antonia exempli fies the subject's empowering-disempowering accession to the Afro-Cuban sign-world of desire, a signifying web that generates the desire it must inevi tably frustrate. The inexorable force that attracts her toward her tragic end is the same hipertelia de la inmortalidad (hypertelia of immortality) that draws Lezama Lima's Jose Cemi through the labyrinth of forms toward a center in

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RcliflioiudRcvelitiOR o BJ which awaits death or the pamdiso (Lezama Lima 288). In this fashion, AfroCuban religion mediates the subject's, Maria Antonia's, desire as it consti tutes the very subject of that desire.3 For all its personal satisfactions, whether real or imagined, however, AfroCuban religion, like Haitian Vaudou, and like Brazilian Candomblc for that mat ter, cannot lay a strong claim to achieving the public good. Hernandez Espinosa's play demonstrates some of the psychological benefits offered by Afro-Cuban religion, but reforming land distribution, nationalizing industries, and building schools are simply not on the religion's agenda, for it has no plan or program of its own to speak of In an illuminating text compa rable with the ones examined in this book, the pai de santo named Jubiaba, in Jorge Amado's novel of the same name (1935), plays no effective part in the Bahian labor movement. The novel's protagonist, Antonio Balduino, comes to realize the priest's uselessness for the social struggle: "He is amazed that Jubiaba knows nothing about the strike. Jubiaba knows stories of slave days and things about spirits; he is free, yet he has never taught the enslaved people of the hill anything about the strike." As this quote indicates, Jubiaba s func tion in Amado's novel is to provide its characters with spiritual guidance, with cures and spells, and with a sense of history in stories of slave revolt and marronnage such as that of Zumbi of Palmares. Above all, Jubiaba provides the magical means of solving life's difficulties, as when Antonio thinks that Jubiaba would be able to save a certain woman from prostitution by casting a spell on the man who exploits her (Amado 272, 197). Jubiaba, Antonio concludes, will take care of the workers' spiritual welfare, but the business of changing history remains for the workers to take into their own hands. A similar agreement to disagree, to settle for the complementary coexist ence of incommensurate sign systems, seems to have been struck in Cuba. The Revolution is no longer the water that extinguishes the fire of religion. It may even see itself fanning the flames a bit in the near future, if the travel ban on the isolated and impoverished island is lifted and waves of tourists and scholars, "tempted by folklore," to cite one of Willy Chirino's song lyrics, decide to make that ninety-mile journey to the source.4

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Notes Chapter OitMrt-dNi Rtlifiti ii lirntiie 1. See Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion, 7-8, on this economic circulation of supernatu ral and secular terms. 2. On the primacy of "iterability," see Derrida, "Signature Event Context," 1 79-80. 3. Castellanos and Castellanos, la culture afrocubana 1:25.The figure is extrapolated from Philip D. Curtin s estimate of 702,000 slaves brought to Cuba, D. R. Murray's 820,000, and Manuel Moreno Fraginals's 1,012,386. 4. For a more extensive discussion of Cartesianism's ideological consequences, see Matibag, "Reason and the State." 5. See Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, 85-87, on basic concepts of "structural analysis." (kilter Iwi:ltieli(Oii Sin Sistea l.The following section was adapted from my "Yoruba Origins of Afro-Cuban Culture." 2. The works to which I refer most frequently in this section on the diloggun include the following: Garcia Cortez, El Santo; Cabrera, Yemayd y Ochiin; Bascom, Sixteen Cowries; Rogers, Los caracoles; Cros Sandoval, La religion afrocubana; de la Soledad and Sanjuan, Ibo; Gonzalez-Wippler, Introduction to Seashell Divination; and Castellanos and Castellanos, La cultura afrocubana 3. 3. See Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, xxiii-xxv. Lyotard's pragmatics of language games accounts for a particular externalization and technification of knowledge com parable to those of other informational systems: "Data banks," writes Lyotard, "are the Encyclopedia of tomorrow. They transcend the capacity of each of their users. They are 'nature* for postmodern man" (51). As I imply by my choice of terms throughout the foregoing discussion of the diloggun, computers and divination systems have certain similarities and differences deserving of further study

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lfl o hits (kilter Tkredke Orishas ii Repuklicai CiN 1. See Aguilar, "The Revolution of 1933." 2. Bakhtine's concept of novelistic "carnivalization" supports some of the follow ing discussions of references to Afro-Cuban religion in the literature of the period. See Bakhtine, L'oeuvre de Francois Rabelais, 202-3, 218-19. (Niter hir:lbfirUtkii 1. See also Ortiz, Los negros brujos, 18-21, 240-41, on the aura of criminality sur rounding the Nanigo practitioners. (kilter Hit Re-nrkiii tkc tuti (titer 1 .The commands of the poem translate as follows: Hit him with the hatchet, and he dies! Hit him now! Don't hit him with your foot, he'll bite you, don't hit him with your foot, he'll go away! (kipter fiLlmw if < 1 .TheVaudou metaphor of Mawu's writing suggests that neither speech nor mean ing preexists "writing": writing is not merely the transcription of spoken thoughts nor the mere recording of those thoughts but that complex activity of differentia tion and supplementation that makes speech and meaning possible. This concept of an impersonal or nonhuman inscription prior to speech and meaning lies behind Derrida's claim that "writing is inaugural" (WD 10, 11). 2. See French, "Is Voodoo the Weapon to Repel the Invaders?" New York Times (late New York edition), June 24, 1994, A4. 3. Gonzalez Echevarria, in "Socrates Among the Weeds: Blacks and History in Carpentier's Explosion in a Cathedral," 545-50, develops the concept of conflicting in terpretations and multiple codings in Carpentier's narratives. 4. For a detailed historical background to the novel, see Speratti-Pinero, "Noviciado y apoteosis deTi Noel en El reino de este mundo" and Pasos hallados en "El reino de este mundo," passim. 5. For an extended discussion of Eshu-Elegbara's role as African-American inter preter, see Gates, 5-11. (kilter Seiei: Relifitn ni Rmlfltioa 1. See Matibag, "Carpentier's Consecration of Stravinsky: The Avant-Garde after the Avant-Garde" for an expansion of the following comments on La Consagracion de la Primavera. 2. See Barthes, "La face baroque" (The baroque face); Barthes and Sollers, "Severo Sarduy"; and Sarduy, "Tanger" for more on the Tel Qud influence on Sarduy's works. 3. See Girard, 2,5,9, 13, and Lacan, 286-87, on the theory of desire as mediated by signifiers. 4. Willy Chirino, "Mister, Don't Touch the Banana," in Oxigeno (sound recording).